


It's Always Darkest

by Kate_Shepard



Series: Do Not Go Gentle [1]
Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: BDSM, Biting, Blood Drinking, F/M, Female-on-male Domestic Violence, Knifeplay, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Minor Character Death, PTSD, September 11 Attacks, Shakespearean insults, Sleepwalking, Vampire AU, Violence, unhealthy bdsm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-04
Updated: 2018-06-04
Packaged: 2019-05-17 23:57:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 23,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14841668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kate_Shepard/pseuds/Kate_Shepard
Summary: When John Shepard's convoy is attacked and his SEAL team killed, his commander takes extreme measures to save his life. But immortality isn't all it's cracked up to be, especially when everything that matters is gone. Can Shepard find a reason to live again or is he doomed to merely survive forever?





	1. Death, or Something Like It

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to ThreeWhiskeyLunch for the beautiful playlist! I am so happy you ended up being my collab partner in this and I absolutely love it all!  
> Special thanks as well to Potionsmaster and InferableFiend for being my betas on this (as well as ThreeWhiskeyLunch). I really appreciate you guys taking the time to read through and indulge my neurotic questions, lol. And another shout out to Potions for letting me borrow their character! Ashton belongs to Potionsmaster.  
> Also, thank you to AzzyDarling for hosting this and all the work you and the other mods do to make this happen!

 

 [Playlist by ThreeWhiskeyLunch](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvRr4ELzSIfhGaCA8oyPiqTrgnpvEsM1-)

[Artist Masterpost](https://threewhiskeylunch.tumblr.com/post/174561789475/for-cdrkateshepard-and-her-excellent-fic-written)

 

  **28 Feb 2017**

**Mogadishu, Somalia**

 

“Incoming!”

The warning shout and the whine of the rocket registered simultaneously, too late for John to do anything more than slam the brakes on the Humvee. He looked over at Ashton in the seat beside him in time to see the window explode, flying glass rupturing inward around the RPG warhead. Time seemed to dilate, rendering the moment with crystalline clarity as the warhead’s fin sliced a clean line across Ashton’s throat before burying itself into the vehicle with a force that drove John back into his seat and pinned him there. Bullets slammed into the back, shattering glass and tearing gaping holes into their teammates.

The world ruptured around them. Other vehicles in the convoy exploded with a roar that echoed in the canyon of ruined buildings, sending smoke, dirt, and shrapnel raining into the air. One flipped, landing atop another. John waited for the searing heat, the instant of blinding pain before it all went dark, but in their vehicle, nothing happened. Ashton slapped his hand to his throat. The warhead didn’t detonate. A dud.

He reached out for something to stem the blood spilling from his teammate/fiancee’s neck, but found himself unable to move. Tearing pain froze him in place. He looked down, trying to ascertain why he couldn’t lean forward, and his mind stuttered, unable to fully grasp the sight that greeted him. A long, metal stem protruded from his torso, wedging itself against the dash. His uniform was dark and sticky around it, warm liquid plastering it to his belly. He cocked his head, Ashton momentarily forgotten as he attempted to reason out what he was seeing. When he did, he wished he hadn’t.

The RPG hadn’t exploded, but it _had_ pierced through his chest, the tip lodging into the seat at his back. He dragged in a hitching breath that almost refused to come, and looked over at his fiancee again. Dead. Whether the rocket exploded or not, they were dead men. Blood was streaming from Ashton’s wound rather than spurting and it looked like the collarbone had deflected it from slitting his throat, but there was enough of it to negate any benefit of his major blood vessels remaining intact. He might survive with immediate medical attention, but a look through windows and mirrors told him that help wasn’t likely to come. If they didn’t bleed out, the insurgents would be here any moment to deal with the survivors. They’d be dragged through the streets. Neither of them were going to make it home.

Ashton’s eyes widened and the other man groped for his hand. John tried to give him some reassurance through rapid gasps that drew mere teaspoons of air, but all that came out was a gurgle. A single tear wended its way down Ashton’s face and his hand, sticky with blood, wrapped around John’s.

“It’s gonna be okay, John,” Ashton gasped, still pressing his other hand to the wound. “You’re gonna be okay. We’ll get you to a hospital and they’ll get that thing out. Just stay calm, baby. You’re doing great. I’m right here. I won’t leave you. You’re gonna be okay.”

“Liar,” John choked out, bright red blood spattering from his lips. “Love you.” He had to say it now, while he still could.

“I love you, too, John,” Ashton said, his face pale against the crimson liquid drying on it. Another tear cut a track through it.

In his eyes, John saw a lifetime of friendship, of travelling from installation to installation with their parents, of new schools where one would suffer the loneliness and stress of being the ‘new kid’ until the other showed up weeks or months later. He saw the two of them sitting in their homeroom class senior year, watching their country fall with the buildings that sent them into a war that seemed like it would never end, looking at each other during the moment in which they both grew up, and the line at the recruiter’s office at the end of the day when they signed up together.

Boot camp, A-school, first deployment, BUD/s training, sniper school. They hadn’t always been stationed together but often enough, continuing traditions held over from childhood. John and Ashton. Shepard and Hayworth, the Terrible Two. They’d saved each other’s asses and pulled each other out of more fires than he could count. Hiding, always hiding what they were to each other until finally, finally, they didn’t have to anymore and John was able to ask the man who’d defined his past to share his future. A future suddenly cut short.

He looked down again at the warhead protruding from his abdomen and finally, his brain caught up to his body, registering the cascade of blinding, searing, tearing pains. His hands moved of their own volition, wrapping around the post, desperate to pull the intruder out. Ashton shouted weakly, lurching toward him and pulling John’s hands away, bright blood spraying from Ash’s neck as something vital tore inside him. John jerked free of his grasp, slapping a palm over the hot wound, feeling the pulse of fluid fighting to spurt free.

His own burning tears tracked down his cheeks. Over. It was over. There would be no escape this time. No marriage. No future beyond the next few minutes. Their entire world condensed to the front seat of the mangled Humvee. Ashton’s hand covered his, pressing harder, their fingers linking together as his face paled and his eyes began to glaze. “So long...as we both...shall live,” John panted, the words a cruel parody of what should have been.

“I do,” Ashton whispered, hazel eyes like wheat fields in sunlight fluttering closed. His final words were barely audible.

The pulse weakened against his hand, but continued to beat. Unconscious, not dead. Not yet. That would come soon enough. And when it did, John would pull out the warhead blocking his own organs and vessels from bleeding out, and if there _was_ a god, they’d be together again. It was just Ashton’s turn to go first, get the lay of the land so that when John showed up, he could show him around. Just like the old days. They’d promised each other forever and nothing, not even death, would keep them apart.

“Shepard!” His heart leapt at the sound of his CO, Captain Hackett, in the window behind him. The door opened with a protesting shriek of metal and Hackett cursed, fingers probing gently around the warhead. “Stay calm, Shepard. You’ve got unexploded ordnance in you. It’s keeping you from bleeding out, though, so we can’t move it. I’m going to help you, son, but you have to stay still.”

“Ash,” he gasped. “Ashton. Hayworth. Him first.”

Hackett’s blue eyes flashed over to Ashton, and he shook his head. “He’s too far gone. He wouldn’t survive the change.”

 _Change? What change?_ Before he could work up the energy to ask or to fight the captain’s decision and insist that he at least _try_ to save Ash, the older man opened his mouth and kissed John’s neck. _What the_ actual _fuck?!_ The faint burning prick that followed registered only enough to clarify without answering any of his questions. _Biting. He’s biting me. What the hell?_ Hackett pulled away, his lips stained a macabre red, and brought his own wrist up to his mouth, slicing the skin with a canine far sharper than John remembered.

 _I’m hallucinating. That’s it. Has to be._ Hackett pressed his bleeding wrist to John’s mouth, fisting a hand in his short hair to tip his head back. John sputtered at the hot, nauseous, metallic liquid filling his mouth, attempting to expel it. This was bullshit. It was crazy. Hackett released his hair and chafed a calloused hand over his throat, forcing him to swallow.

Hell, at this point, it was unlikely anything could even reach his stomach, and what little blood he could take in through his mouth would be utterly insignificant in comparison to what he was likely losing internally or would as soon as they tried to move him. He tried to jerk away, but his range of motion was limited to his head and the grimy seatback prevented even that. The fuck was he doing?

John wasn't a dog, being forced to swallow a pill. He was a goddamn soldier. One who was bleeding out and seeing shit that couldn't possibly be real. There were no angels with their clarion horns come to him in a white light to take him home. There was no Grim Reaper, riding a pale horse with a scythe and a bony finger crooked at him. There was no light. There was only blood, and confusion, and cold seeping through his muscles as his warmth and life was drained away into the throat of some demon wearing his captain's face.

“Be still, Shepard,” Hackett ordered. “Just another minute and you’ll be alright.”

“Ash,” he groaned against the skin at his mouth. Why wasn’t Hackett trying to save Ashton?

“He’s gone, Shepard,” the captain said.

John’s eyes cut to the side to find Ashton’s autumnal ones glazed and staring sightlessly back at him. Blood seeped against the hand still on the other man’s neck, leaking now rather than pulsing, without even a thready beat behind it. Grief made John’s heart stutter and halt, twisting in his chest. What little breath he’d drawn left his lungs on a soft exhale.

 

***

 

 _John slouched in the desk at the back of his fifth grade classroom, picking at the eraser on his pencil and trying to fight the lump at the back of his throat. It was April 11, his birthday. In the past six weeks since his mom had been transferred to Georgia, two of his classmates had had birthdays. The other students had brought cards and candy, their friends had given them presents. The gifts were usually dumb things like keychains and bookmarks, but it was still_ something _. No one had even said ‘happy birthday’ to him._

_It was like he didn’t exist. Coming to a new school at the end of the school year wasn’t like moving at the beginning, like he’d done at his last school. The end of the year meant everyone already knew each other and had formed into groups. Groups they didn’t want the new kid in. He had no friends, and even though Mrs. Jenson had announced that it was his birthday, he’d gotten no more recognition that they even knew he existed than curious stares and whispers. He hated this school. He hated being here. He wanted to go back to Missouri. Georgia was stupid._

_The bell rang and he slung his backpack over his shoulder, looking down at the new shoes Mom had left at the end of his bed that morning before she’d gone to work on post. At least she hadn’t forgotten this year. The others milled around him, creating a din that just exacerbated his loneliness. If they’d just get out of the way, he could go home and forget this day had ever happened. Nick, his best friend from his old school, would be home in an hour or so. He hadn’t been answering the phone lately and hadn’t had much to say, but surely he’d want to talk to him today._

_“John?” The soft voice broke him from his self-pity. He looked up to see a short, blonde boy with golden-brown eyes flecked with green standing in front of him. Ashton Hayworth. Another Army brat, like him. But Ashton had been here long enough to make friends, so they’d never talked before._

_“What do you want?” he muttered, scuffing the toe of his shoe against the linoleum tile._

_“Happy birthday,” Ashton said, holding out his hand. A used eraser with a faded Pikachu printed on it rested in his palm. “I didn’t know or I’d have gotten something better, but this is my favorite. I hope you like it.”_

_John’s face broke into a slow grin as he took the proffered gift from the boy’s hand. “Hey! He’s my favorite, too!”_

_Ashton’s face lit with a smile. “You wanna come to my house? We can watch it on TV. My mom and dad won’t mind as long as we do our homework, too.”_

_“Yeah,” John said, the lump fading from his throat. “That’d be cool.”_

_Huh. Maybe he had a friend here after all._

 

***

 

Ashton was gone now. A near-lifetime of friendship and then more cut short. _As long as we_ both _shall live…_ Married and widowed in the span of heartbeats. None of it legal, but he didn’t care about the law; paper couldn’t make it any more real.

Hackett released John’s mouth and throat and wrapped his hands around the warhead, giving it a strong jerk. John slumped forward as it ejected from his body with a sucking slurp, his hands clapping over the gaping wound. White-hot pain lanced through him, making his very _teeth_ scream. The world went gray around him. No light. No darkness. No flashes of visions or starbursts or life before his eyes. Nothing that said ‘dying’, but he had to be.

His heart was still, a hollowness in his chest that he noted only because of its absence, the sheer _emptiness_ matched only by the aching pit of starvation crawling through him, the burning-itching-piercing in his gums and his teeth too big for his mouth, his tongue catching on the edges of canines like barbs of concertina wire. And through it all, a relentless, all-consuming hollow in his belly and fire in his throat.

He gasped in an unsatisfactory breath of stale air tinged with something that made him... _thirsty_. His sight returned, bloodshot and tinged with red. The pain was gone. Blood no longer rushed in his ears. Less than he’d expected drained from the wound. He felt...fine. His head was fuzzy, thoughts coming in disjointed shards.

_Shock. That’s all. In shock._

Hackett vanished and reappeared a few moments later, empty-handed. John tentatively leaned forward, and finding that he could move, sniffed the air. That same stale taste like recycled air in a bunker met him despite the breeze blowing smoke and dust through the open door. The scent, that meat-cooking-on-a-grill, mouth-watering, _thirsty_ scent permeated it, seeping into his nostrils and making his throat burn. He dragged his nose across the cheek of the body beside him. His tongue darted out and tasted a drop of the tacky fluid sticking to its skin.

“Shepard, no!” Hackett growled.

John’s head flashed around, teeth bared, and he hissed sharply at the other man, warning him away. This was _his_. His meal, his drink, _his_.

Strong hands banded around his arms, dragging him inexorably away from the alluring scent. He tried to fight it, but he was weak, blinded by the too-bright orange sun glaring off of a shattered window, still struggling to draw in useful breaths of air that shouldn’t have tasted like supermarket and blood, but dust and smoke and metal. “Let. _Go_ ,” he snarled, trying again to snatch himself out of the man’s grasp and back into the vehicle to drink until his mouth no longer felt like he’d attempted to eat the sand at his feet.

“You can’t do that, Shepard,” Hackett said, pulling him away from the demolished Humvee. “I know you’re thirsty, but you can’t drink the dead. Come with me.”

The compulsion to obey a direct order had been drilled into him since boot camp. He let himself be dragged along, hands playing over the hole in his uniform blouse, searching for the wound. It wasn’t there. Smooth skin met his questing fingers. _I’m dead. I’m dead and this is hell. Of course Ashton isn’t here._ He shielded his eyes from the painful, blinding sun, through the remains of their convoy. Silent bodies littered the broken, charred vehicles, the scent around them reminiscent of that in the Humvee with the other one, but flatter and less appealing.

A series of soft, rhythmic thuds drifted on the air, a racing heartbeat he shouldn’t have been able to hear. He pulled from Hackett’s grasp and skittered around the shell of another truck to find a wide-eyed man tied to the bumper. A used rocket launcher lay discarded on the gritty street beside him. John’s eyes narrowed, his nostrils flaring as the scent from the Humvee slammed into him, warm and appetizing. His teeth, too long and sharp to be called anything but fangs, nicked his lips and tongue.

This asshole. This motherfucking asshole was the one who’d...done something. He couldn’t remember much of anything before Hackett had pulled him off of the body. The destruction around them was clearly this asshole’s fault, even if he couldn’t remember what had happened or what it meant. The captain knelt down beside the man, baring canines and premolars sharpened into wicked points, and placed two fingers over the pulse in the man’s wrist.

“Bite here,” he said. “Not hard. You don’t need to go deep. Just pierce the vessel.”

 _Why?_ He scowled, trying to ignore the burning in his throat. “What...did you do...to me?”

“I’ll explain everything in a few minutes, but right now, you need to feed. Your head will be clearer if you do. There’s no point until then. You won’t hold information for more than a few minutes. Now, bite here. Unless, of course, you want to refrain and undo all of my work.”

Thirst drove him to his knees and had the man’s wrist in his hands without conscious thought. He placed the elongated teeth over the spots Hackett indicated and felt an answering ache in his lower jaw. A moment later, his bottom canines met the other side of the man’s wrist, locking it in place. A simple flex prevented him from pulling it away.

The man shrieked something in a language John couldn’t understand, struggling against them and his bonds. Hackett’s head dipped, his mouth fitting to the man’s throat as John bit down. Hot, delectable liquid filled his mouth, far better than what had come from Hackett’s veins. Better, in fact, than anything he could remember tasting. He’d been eating ash his entire life and only now did he truly understand what flavor was.

He drank deep of the pulsing ambrosia channeling up the backs of his teeth and spraying against the roof of his mouth. He drank until it slowed and the baby-bird throb of the man’s heart faded to a thready, unreliable thump. Hackett’s thumb slid into his mouth, breaking the seal, and pressed painfully into the back of his jaw, prying it open. “Enough, Shepard. He’s too close to dead. Let go.”

John snarled and attempted to suck harder at the bite, but Hackett was indomitable, forcing him to give up his prize. John glared at him through the red haze that colored everything and hissed again. He wanted to take that one away? Fine. There were others. Other bags of flesh carrying around that fucking _nectar_. He couldn’t understand why he hadn’t been drinking it all along. Whatever Hackett had done to him, he’d turned him into a _god_ and it was high fucking time he start demanding his tribute.

“Jesus Christ, Shepard. I didn’t realize you were such a narcissist. Knock that shit off. You’re no god, no more than I am,” Hackett scolded.

“What am I, then?” he asked, edging back toward the body in the sand. The heartbeat was gone, but the scent remained. If he could just get past--

Hackett moved, intercepting him. “Vampire,” he said, stopping John in his tracks.


	2. Death, or Something Like It, Part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is where the warning about 9/11 comes into play for American readers. It's in the italicized portion.

**28 Feb 2017**

**Mogadishu, Somalia**

 

“There’s no such thing as vampires,” John scoffed. “Besides, we’re standing in sunlight. I don’t see us burning.”

“Blame  _ Nosferatu _ for that particular myth,” Hackett said, taking him by the arm and walking west down an alley that shielded them from view of the convoy. His eyes scanned the broken buildings, his nostrils flaring slightly. “Or be grateful to it. It certainly makes it easier to hide in plain sight.”

The captain was fucking nuts. Why hadn’t he realized that before? One had to be a bit crazy to be a SEAL, but this was beyond the insanity that made one team run in while entire platoons ran out.  _ Vampires _ ? That shit didn’t exist. Next, he’d be telling him he’d brought a unicorn for extraction and they were meeting Cthulu at the rally point. He’d snapped. Seeing his squad die had broken him.

Or maybe John was the one who’d snapped. Or maybe he really was dead. The memories were becoming clearer again. How else could he explain the total lack of even a mark where the warhead had pierced him even though there was still a bloody hole in his shirt? Or the fangs that still nicked and sliced his lips and tongue, micro-wounds that closed almost as quickly as they opened. Or the satisfying taste of blood still coating his mouth. Or the total absence of a heartbeat and lungs that didn’t seem to need to draw air, though habit kept him breathing. He was dead and this was hell.

“You are  _ not _ dead,” Hackett said, responding to yet another unvoiced train of thought. Either the man was reading his mind now or was a figment of his imagination. The latter seemed far more likely. “At least, not entirely. You still have brain activity. You’ll still have a pulse once you figure out how to keep it beating. It’ll become second-nature eventually. On a related note, I wouldn’t advise sitting for long until you do. Lividity is hard to explain away. Keep moving and your muscles will shunt the blood well enough.”

Fine by him. He wanted to pace anyway. Sand-covered asphalt gritted under his boots as he carved a path in it, thinking as quickly as his strained mind would allow. Perhaps he’d slipped into a coma. Maybe he was in the process of dying and was perceiving the seconds that passed as minutes or even hours. Would he be able to reason then?

This was a cruel joke. Purgatory. Limbo. Stasis.  _ In between _ , liminal spaces, whatever the fuck it was. But it was nasty and harsh and awful to keep him here and waiting without Ashton.  

“Didn’t take you for a religious man, Shepard,” Hackett rumbled, brushing a bit of dirt off of his sleeve.  “And this is no joke, even if you find it a little ironic.”

“Right. My CO is a vampire, turned me into one, and can now read my mind. Because  _ that’s _ rea-fucking-listic,” John sneered. “You’re the result of synapses misfiring as I die. Give it a few hours and all this will fade away and there’ll be...whatever’s really after this.”

Hackett shrugged. “Typically, I’d say we have all the time in the world to prove you wrong, but I called for extraction. That line of dust about a klick away? That’s reinforcements. I would advise that you come to terms with this quickly because if you start talking about taking a rocket to the chest and drinking blood, they’ll lock your ass up and throw away the key. And believe me, you don’t want that. You don’t feed, you die. Slowly. Rotting. It’s disgusting, really.”

“So, what? I’ve now got to kill people every day to keep myself half-alive?” John asked with a raised brow. The line of swirling sand was getting closer. Two minutes if they were lucky. Might as well pretend to believe all of this. If he was right, then it was at least a diversion from his racing thoughts. If he was wrong and Hackett was real and telling the truth, then he needed every bit of intel he could get as quickly as he could get. Being right would cost him nothing. Being wrong could cost him everything.

_ Like there’s anything left to lose. Ash’s gone. What does it fucking matter? _

“No, you don’t.”

“I don’t.”

“No. Just have to find a supply. I don’t recommend going near the med tent when you’re not used to the scent. And stay away from blood packs if you can avoid them. They taste like dead blood and they’re more useful for your living food source to keep producing more.”

“How do I do that?”

“You hunt.”

“ _ Hunt. _ ”

“Mmhm. Nightclubs, bars...seedy places where people won’t believe the shit people babble about. Or if you can find a vampire groupie, they’re usually willing. They’re not very common where currently are, though. I suggest Atlanta or New Orleans. Hell, you’re a soldier in wartime. You’re uniquely positioned to find the sustenance you need.”

“You said I didn’t have to kill anybody. Now you want me to murder innocent people,” he said flatly.

“No. A liter per week will keep you healthy, so to speak, unless you’re injured and need to regenerate; in which case, you’ll need more. The human body contains five to six liters. You don’t  _ need _ to kill them to feed. You simply need to learn how to  _ stop _ feeding so that you don’t,” the captain answered, peering around the corner at the incoming convoy. “As for the mythos, you can see we cast a shadow. We have reflections. Religious items have no power. Garlic smells pungent, but is only repulsive as a matter of taste. You  _ will _ develop an allergy to silver. It isn’t likely to kill you, but it hurts like hell.”

“What  _ will  _ kill us?” John asked.

“Beheading, burning, drowning, suffocating, things of that nature,” he said with a shrug. “You can go for longer periods without breathing, but you do need to supply  _ some _ oxygen to your brain and it helps with stamina. Which means you need to learn to make your heart beat. Focus on it like you focus on breathing. You’ll be fine. Oh, and while you can heal most injuries, you can’t regenerate limbs. Try not to get anything cut off.”

“You think this is funny,” John accused.

Hackett smirked. “A bit, yes. We’ve all been through it. We all have the same questions. And, yes, I can read your mind when I want. No, others like us can’t. I created you. There are benefits.”

“What kind of--” Hackett turned and jogged down the street toward the convoy. John followed him with a scowl. “Damn it.”

He let Hackett talk to the extraction team, explaining what happened and answering their questions. It was still somewhat fuzzy, so he walked back over to the Humvee and opened the shattered door on Ashton’s side. The body lay slumped on its side, the blood coagulated and no longer appealing. He removed his ruined shirt and wet it with water from his canteen before using it to gingerly clean Ashton’s face.

Say Hackett was right. What was the point of near-immortality when the only thing that mattered was gone? He assumed he wouldn’t age--another question for Hackett--and if so, that meant his time with the people he knew now was limited. Not that it would be any great loss. His father was dead. He and his mother weren’t close. His team was his family and they were all dead but for the captain. He’d just be a painful reminder to the Hayworth’s. He had nothing to fight for, nothing to hope for, nothing to  _ live _ for. Drowning, beheading, whatever, didn’t sound terribly unappealing. Hackett should have just left well enough alone.

 

***

 

_ John caught the wad of paper Ashton tossed his way when the teacher turned his back and smoothed it out in his lap.  _ Pizza after school?  _ written in his best friend’s sharp, blocky handwriting. The boy had just moved to New York City where John’s mom had been stationed at Fort Hamilton for three months. It was his turn to show Ashton around. _

_ The classroom door burst open and a teacher he didn’t recognize rushed in. “Turn on the television. A plane just flew into the World Trade Center.” _

_ “What happened?” Mr. Nickens asked, snatching the remote from his desk. _

_ “We don’t know yet,” the teacher said. “But they think it was an airliner.” _

_ The television snapped on, showing a talking head with the towers in the background. A thick, dark plume of smoke rolled into the air above one, like the rupture of ash and smoke from a volcano. John glanced over at Ashton to find the other boy’s hazel eyes turned toward him. He looked at the screen in time to see an airplane fly toward the towers and leaned forward for a closer look. It looked like it was heading straight for the second tower. He jumped in his seat with a gasp as it barreled into the undamaged skyscraper. Around him, a few of the girls screamed and one of the boys jumped up from his seat, pointing wildly at the screen. _

Someone did that on purpose.

_ He looked over at Ashton again. The boy was pale and his hands trembled on his desk. His eyes when they met John’s were wide and fearful. His lips pressed into a thin line. John reached over and put a hand on his shoulder, trying to pass on reassurance he didn’t feel and draw comfort from his friend. This was bad. This was very, very bad. _

Mom’s going to war.

_ Ashton reached up, sliding his hand over John’s and gave a gentle squeeze. It still held a slight tremor and his skin was clammy and too warm, but John didn’t care. Two rows over, Parker stood behind his girlfriend, Kayleigh, with both hands on her shoulders and hers on his. Parker glanced at them with a raised eyebrow, but for once, he didn’t have something snarky to say. John didn’t care about that, either. Let them think whatever they wanted. The contact was comforting. That’s all it was. _

_ The hour that followed was pandemonious. Mr. Nickens tried to keep order while remaining riveted to the screen. In a shaking voice, he attempted to explain the unexplainable and put the event into perspective, telling them that they were watching history unfold. _

_ “I know this is frightening,” he said, “but pay attention if you can. Your kids will ask you about this day.”   _

_ Parents began arriving to check their kids out of class. Mrs. Hayworth came and took both John and Ashton, saying that Hannah had called her. The base was on lockdown and Mom couldn’t leave. He sat in the back with Ashton beside him as they drove to the off-post apartment Ashton’s parents had in Brooklyn. Through the windows, they could see the twin plumes of black smoke streaming across the clear blue sky, and could smell it through the vents. It reminded John of a paper fire covered in water: acrid and ashy. Gray people streamed across the otherwise empty bridge, most coated from head to toe in a thick layer of soot. _

_ Traffic, already moving slowly, ground to a halt. Ashton leaned over him to peer through the window as a bloom of lighter gray appeared below the black and rolled downward, roiling between the buildings and mushrooming up to their roofs like a dirty cloud. He didn’t understand what he was seeing until Mrs. Hayworth brought a trembling hand up to her mouth and said, “Oh my God. Oh my God. It collapsed. All those  _ people _. Oh my God.” _

_ The smoke poured itself around buildings, eating them until the entire world seemed like it was made of gray and black. The cloud rolled like fog across the bridge, moving toward them. Mrs. Hayworth pressed a button on the air conditioner, closing the outside vents, and turned on the lights. Soon, those were the only sign that there were vehicles around them. Dirty brown smoke pressed against the windows, searching for entry. _

_ John reached out and gripped Ashton’s hand, looking at the boy in the dim light. Ashton squeezed back. His trembling made blonde hair dance over his forehead. John pulled him closer and Ashton burrowed under his arm, heedless of the fact that they were both seniors in high school and almost grown men. Like earlier in class, it felt right.      _

_ Mrs. Hayworth reached back between the front seats, groping for their hands. They clutched at her, waiting in quivering silence for the world to end. At least if it did, they’d go out together. _

 

***

 

John scooped Ashton up into his arms, amazed at how light the other man felt, and carried him over to one of the newly-arrived trucks. Members of one of his brother teams stood guard, watching for the insurgents John assumed Hackett had already disposed of. They nodded solemnly at him as he gently laid Ashton in the back of the Humvee, folding his hands over his chest. There weren’t enough clean spots left on his shirt to deal with all of the blood, but he did the best he could and tried to choke down the hot lump of grief in his throat.

No. Not grief, though that certainly was there. Thirst. He could smell the blood running through the team’s veins, hear the rhythms of their hearts. The red tinge began to creep across his vision again and his teeth, which had finally seemed to retract, nicked his lip again.  _ Fuck _ . There was no goddamn way he was going to be able to hide this and damned if he’d feed on one of his brothers. He looked around for Hackett, but didn’t see him. Where was the goddamn man when he needed him?

The medic was approaching. That was bad. That was very, very bad. He didn’t trust his control, not when instincts he shouldn’t possess were screaming at him to hunt and kill and  _ feed _ . Hackett was still out of sight.  _ Fucking help me, man _ , he bitched silently as he climbed up into the truck and dragged Seth’s body into his lap. The medic called his name, but John ignored him as best he could and focused instead on the body of his dead partner. There would be time to grieve and plenty of it unless he really was comatose or dying. Right now, he needed to get through the next ten minutes without murdering someone. Without Hackett, there was no way in hell he’d be able to stop once he started. And what  _ would _ happen if he took blood from a dead body anyway?

“Senior Chief!” the medic called. “Senior Chief Shepard, I need to take a look at you.”

_ Go away. Go away. Go away. _ The thought reverberated with the beat of the medic’s heart in his ears. His muscles coiled, preparing to spring in spite of the body in his lap. His mouth watered, doing nothing to bank the fire in his throat.  _ Go away. Go away. Go away. _ Even his lower canines were fully extended and that hadn’t happened before until he’d touched skin. It was as if his earlier meal had done nothing to slake his thirst. It had only shown him what he was missing. The closer the medic came, the less John saw of the human being and the more the man became simply prey.

“Ensign Armstrong!” Hackett’s voice cut through the haze, redirecting the medic’s attention. John had to inhale to breathe a sigh of combined relief and disappointment.

With the immediate temptation removed, John returned his focus to Ashton. Why hadn’t Hackett tried to save him, too? Could he even now? Was it really too late? Hackett said it was, but he hadn’t even  _ tried _ . The captain was out of sight again around the side of the Humvee. The others had their backs to them. What if he  _ could _ bring him back? It seemed simple enough. Hackett had bitten him, drunk a little, and forced his own blood down John’s throat.

Sure, he’d said not to ingest dead blood, but what  _ would _ it do? Kill him? That wasn’t a detriment. If it didn’t work, they’d both be dead. Make him sick? He could handle that if it meant bringing him the fuck back. Any price was worth that. If what Hackett said was true, he was doomed to walk the earth alone, without the one fucking person who’d ever fucking mattered to him. No. Not happening. He wouldn’t do it.

Another glance around showed him that he was still unobserved. He smoothed a hand over Ash’s close-cropped dirty blonde hair and bent down, pressing his lips over the other man’s still pulse. “Please come back to me,” he whispered, baring his teeth.

“Shepard, stop!”

John froze, his jaw straining to close over Ashton’s throat, his body trembling with the strain of attempting to belay the captain’s order. He couldn’t move.  _ ‘Benefits,’ he says. Fucking mind control is what it is. _ The look he shot Hackett contained as much venom as he could infuse into it. The captain rushed over, slapping his hand between Ash’s neck and John’s teeth, mindless of the fangs that scraped over his skin.

“It won’t work, John,” he said in a low voice. “You cannot bring back the dead. But if you drink from him, you will  _ change _ . There will be no shred of humanity left in you. You will be mindless, driven only by the need to slaughter, and you will die slowly, decomposing as you do. You want to be a zombie? That’s how you get zombies, Senior Chief. Do not under any circumstances  _ ever _ ingest the blood of the dead. That’s an order, Shepard.”

“I can’t do this,” he whispered. “I don’t  _ want  _ to do this.”

“Then kill yourself privately, but I will not let you out the rest of us because you won’t listen,” Hackett snarled. “If I could have saved him, I would have. You were both my men. He was too far gone, John. The change itself would have killed him. I wasn’t going to waste time on a lost cause when there was at least one that I could save. You want to throw that away, that’s your prerogative. What you do in public is mine. Watching humans die is part of life for us. You’ll save the ones you can and get over the ones you can’t.”

“Never,” John vowed. “I’ll never ‘get over’ him.”

Hackett sighed, shaking his head. “You live long enough, John, and you’ll find there’s nothing you can’t get over.”

“How long?” John demanded. “How long have you been around?”

“Five hundred years, give or take a decade,” he answered. “I quit counting.”

John dropped his forehead onto Ashton’s, swallowing hard. Five hundred years. He was never going to fucking die. He would never get back to him. Death looked better by the minute.

“Tell you what.  Find me when we get back to base so I can ‘debrief’ you, we’ll get some...grub, and I’ll answer any questions you might have.  What you choose to do after that is up to you.”


	3. Time Marches On

**2 March 2157**

**Shanxi Colony**

 

Aliens. Fucking aliens. He’d never imagined he’d live to see the day. And yet here he was, on another planet, with a fucking alien lined up in his scope. Hackett, going by Reeves these days, had sent him here with one objective: reclaim Shanxi from the turians. Of course, the first aliens they’d encountered had been hostile, though there were rumors that the turians weren’t the only ones out there. According to Steven, there were at least three other species and possibly more and they all worked together.

He supposed they were fortunate the others seemed content to stay out of the way and let the humans and turians sort things out for themselves. Fuck knew the turians were giving them a run for their money already. Only three months in and already they’d managed to capture one of humanity’s colonies. He couldn’t tell one of the birds from another and their blood smelled like metal and did nothing for him--he’d tried it out of curiosity once--so he hadn’t bothered to learn more about them than what it took to kill them. They were an enemy threatening his food supply. That was all.

One hundred and forty years had passed since the day Hackett had changed him. He’d long since decided that his fate was real and not some fevered dream brought on by his dying mind.  He’d seen the moon settled and then Mars, space stations built throughout the Solar System, the discovery of mass effect physics. He’d been on one of the first voyages through the Charon relay, one of the first members of the newly-created Systems Alliance, had moved onto a space station, seen the settlement of extrasolar colony worlds, and the first contact with alien life. To think, when he’d been changed, humans hadn’t even set foot on Mars yet and FTL travel was still regarded as a pipe dream.

Humanity had made enough leaps and bounds that he was rarely bored and he was sometimes even thankful that Hackett had talked him out of ending it all. He’d found a purpose--sort of--though it likely wasn’t one he’d have regarded as healthy a century and a half ago. Protect humanity. Guard his food source. As purposes went, it wasn’t particularly impressive and he’d long ago stopped trying to fool himself that he was at all altruistic. He’d survived, one day after another, one foot in front of the other. He indulged his curiosity and whiled away the decades, waiting, always waiting. Waiting for...something. Something to take him out. Something to make him live again. Something to make it all worthwhile. Something to bring him home to Ashton.

It had been bad at first and he’d spent more time than he wanted to think about--a month solid after Ash’s funeral--standing by the water at...whatever Naval station he’d been at back then, contemplating walking in and just not walking out again. He’d seen teams come and go, had recreated himself more times than he could count, had learned from one of Steven’s vampire friends how to hack into first the US military’s systems and then the Alliance’s in order to change his records and delete existing ones when he formed a new identity. He’d served in almost every military on Earth before the Alliance was formed, moving from one unit to another, doing his best to avoid people who might know him in the tight-knit spec ops community.

He’d nearly gotten caught a few times, had started hunting criminals when he’d realized that learning to stop drinking before draining was going to be harder than he’d anticipated, taken a gunshot that almost revealed him to the medics, and had almost experienced starvation along with the rest of the garrison here before General Williams had surrendered.

It wasn’t generally a problem on the battlefield where dying victims were plentiful, but here with the aliens, the only food sources were his allies. He had eventually learned to meter what he took, but there were no seedy nightclubs here where he could seduce and bite someone who wouldn’t be believed if they talked. He’d learned who the heavy sleepers were and with the advent of medigel, it was easier than ever to hide any sign he’d fed. But when they were starving themselves, taking even small amounts of blood could be the thing that pushed them over the edge.

He might have come to look at humans as food rather than companions--easier that way, given how easily they died and the fact that any type of long-term acquaintanceship with them was out of the cards--but that didn’t mean he wanted to slaughter his sheep. So, he’d stopped feeding. The effects were as bad as Hackett had warned. ‘Technically alive’ also meant ‘mostly dead’ where he was concerned. Without fresh blood to replenish what he couldn’t create or support on his own, he’d begun to waste. Very few things caused him real pain anymore, but that had been one of them. The humans hadn’t been faring much better. The rest of the Alliance might look down on Williams for doing what had to be done to save his people, but they hadn't been there. John had. There was no point in saving a planet when the people on it were all dead.

He exhaled slowly, finger gently squeezing the trigger, and watched the turian’s head rupture through his scope. This unit was one of the better ones he’d seen and they were all good. The turian leading it reminded him of Tywin Lannister from his favorite series back when he’d turned. Cunning, ruthless, a brilliant strategist, but arrogant and too rigid to adjust for the variable that was once John Shepard.

“Sarkovsky.”

“I’m here,” he whispered into his comm.

“Report back to the goddamn base. ‘Captain Reeves’ wants to speak with you.”

“Aye aye.”

He scanned the field again, ensuring that he hadn’t missed any of the patrol, and collapsed his sniper rifle onto his back. Moving, at least, would warm him up. He’d thought he was patient back when he was fully alive. After a century and a half of being a soldier, he’d discovered a new level of patience. Jarvis, one of the interrogators, had laughingly informed him that his codename with the turians was something that translated roughly into ‘Death’s Whisper.’ He’d take it. Waiting them out to get the perfect shot on his target was ridiculously simple. Unfortunately, Shanxi was cold, which meant that when he was sitting still, he wasn’t producing body heat on his own and his heart had to work harder than normal to keep the blood from pooling and discoloring his skin. Running helped, especially out here when he was alone and didn’t have to hold himself back.

He zipped through the trees, leaping fallen logs and ducking under low-hanging branches until he was within sight of the base. He slowed to a human pace and took his time at check-in to make up the difference. The devil, as they said, was in the details, and it was the little things that were most likely to draw the humans’ suspicions. When he’d judged he’d wasted sufficient time, he made his way to ‘Reeves’ office and checked in with his ‘assistant’, Daniels.

Hackett had found Daniels less than a decade before, coming across the grizzled, snarky Brit in a bar in London. Steven had fed on him, but Daniels hadn’t tried to tell anyone about it or put up a fuss. He’d simply tracked Hackett to the newly-minted Alliance post in London and confronted him. John wasn’t privy to most of the details after that, but Daniels had ended up bound to him. A year later, Steven had found him lying in a pool of his own blood after a brutal gang attack that had left him terribly scarred, though his tie to Hackett had kept it from killing him. He’d refused to let Hackett turn him, instead simply accepting the scars. Steven had kept him close after that.

The thing that fascinated John was Hackett’s steadfast belief that Daniels was the reincarnation of his dead wife, Leliana. Aside from his obviously sound belief in vampires, Steven wasn’t prone to flights of fancy. For a supernatural creature, he wasn’t religious or particularly superstitious, and he didn’t believe in the vast majority of myths and legends. However, he was utterly convinced that the dead returned to the mortal plane in new bodies with new lives after death. Even as he mentally scoffed at the idea, he wished it was true. The chance, however slim, of having Ashton back would be worth any length of time spent waiting for him.

 

***

 

_ “So...did you give any more thought to my idea?” Ashton asked without looking at him. He picked at John’s bedcover, a leg tucked up under him. _

_ “Joining up?” John asked, his desk chair creaking as he leaned back into it. _

_ “Yeah.” The word was quiet, but there was strength in it, courage borne of conviction. His hazel eyes locked with John’s. “So?” _

_ “Hell, yeah,” John said, leaning forward again with a protesting screech from the chair. “Those assholes came to our country and killed our people. What’s to stop them from doing it again? Us. So, let’s do it. I don’t want to go Army, though. I’ve seen them screw Mom over too many times and if we’re gonna go, we might as well go big, right?” _

_ Ashton winced at the noise, sliding over on the bed. “Can you, like...not? With the chair? Plenty of room up here. I won’t bite.” _

_ The back of his neck heated slightly as he flopped onto his back on the bed. “Sorry. Keep forgetting to oil it. So, what d’you think? Want to try to get into the SEALs?” _

_ “Heck yeah...aren’t they supposed to be one of the best in the world?” _

_ “Oh, yeah. SEALs are badass. Navy, then? I mean...if we don’t get selected or whatever, we might end up sitting things out. Not sure how much the Navy’s gonna be doing in a desert war, but they’ve got helicopters and shit if it doesn’t work out the way we want. We can find  _ something  _ to do.” _

_ Ashton heaved a sigh as he flopped on his back next to him, still fussing with the bedspread. “Be your personal waterboy, like at your games...different helmet, though.” _

_ John snorted and bumped their shoulders together. “I’m not  _ that  _ good. I think we’ll be better off finding something to do in the military.” _

_ The blond boy looked at him, amused. “Yeah, I was talking about the military. Trying to make a joke… I know soldiers don’t have personal waterboys. Unless, you know...you play football for the Navy team. Then I’ll be in the stands cheering you on at West Point for the big game.” _

_ John had the sudden urge to put his arm around the other boy and tuck him up against his side like he had in the car a few days before and shook his head at himself. Ashton rolled onto his side to face him and John mirrored him, tucking a hand under his head to prop himself up and drawing small patterns on the bedspread. _

_ “I’m not that good, either. And I’m not smart enough for West Point,” he said. _

_ “Sure you are. Don’t sell yourself short, John… You’re right up there with the eggheads in class rank.” _

_ John shrugged a shoulder. “Yeah, on some things.” _

_ “On more than ‘some things’, but okay…” Ashton muttered, half grin on his face. “Whatever you say.” _

_ “Snarky asshole,” John teased with a smirk, shoving playfully at his shoulder. _

_ “Modest jerkwad,” the smaller boy huffed back with a laugh and reciprocating shove. “Which...okay, that sounds a bit oxymoronic, but...you know what I mean.” _

_ “‘Jerkwad’? Really?” John laughed, bumping his shoulder again. _

_ “Fine. You absolute walnut? That any better?” This time the gentle shove was accompanied with a small push from his foot on John’s shin. _

_ “You are so weird sometimes,” John laughed affectionately, pushing back again. ‘Walnut.’ It was kind of cute, actually. Hell,  _ Ashton _ was kinda cute. The way his eyes glowed when he laughed and the little quirk to his mouth when he smiled… He was  _ really _ cute. Why was John just now noticing this? _

_ “Takes one to know one, doofus,” he retorted with another half-grin, reaching up to ruffle John’s hair. _

_ John caught his hand, tugging it back down to the bedspread, but couldn’t bring himself to let it go just yet. Ashton would probably knock the shit out of him, but it would be worth it. “You’re just going all-out, aren’t you, Ash?” _

_ “Well, apparently my insults aren’t insulting enough. So you get quantity over crudeness. Turdblossom…” came the amused snapback. _

_ “I don’t know if you’re getting better or worse at this,” John chuckled, shifting slightly closer. Ashton hadn’t knocked him out and hadn’t pulled his hand away. John’s heart thundered in his chest. His lips spread into a wide grin that he suspected looked goofy as hell, but he couldn’t stop it. He kept noticing things he hadn’t before, like the dimple on his left cheek, the small scar on the bottom of his chin from a skateboarding accident some years ago, the way his hair just barely started to curl above his ears and the nape of his neck. _

_ Or the fact that Ashton’s ears were slowly turning pink the longer he stared at him. Or the fact that his hand was getting hotter the longer he held the other boy’s. _

_ “...Thou cream-faced loon…” Ashton whispered, eyes sparkling. “Thou damned and luxurious mountain goat. Any better now, prithee praytell?” _

_ John guffawed, the laugh rolling from his belly and sending tears streaming down his cheeks. “Yeah, well, your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries,” he managed to choke out as he struggled for breath. _

_ “Yeah, well...I don’t really want to fart in your general direction, though. I still kinda-maybe-sorta-kinda-maybe like you somewhat in a kinda-sorta-maybe-kinda way.” _

_ John’s laughter faded, though the grin remained. He squeezed Ashton’s hand and leaned in, bringing their noses together, whispering, “Yeah, well, I kinda-sorta-maybe like you just a little, too.” _

_ The mirth faded from Ashton’s face, eyes still locked on John’s. “You...y’do?” _

_ John’s grin dropped and his heart thudded to what felt like a complete stop.  _ Oh shit. Oh shit oh shit.  _ He’d fucked up. He’d completely misread this. He jerked his hand away like Ashton’s had caught fire and stared at the boy with wide eyes. He’d deck him for sure now. He probably wouldn’t even want to be friends now. Fuck. Well, if this was the last time he’d ever see him, he might as well go for broke.  _ Go big or go home, right? _ He closed the distance between them and pressed his lips to Ashton’s, waiting for the inevitable punch that would end their friendship. _

_ It didn’t come. Instead there was a stillness to him, a tenuous pause, and that was  _ something _ , but it wasn’t exactly encouraging. He’d just stop, count his lucky stars that it didn’t end  in a fist fight, and hope to high hell it didn’t totally fuck over their friendship. Except...their fingers laced together and Ashton squeezed his hand for all his worth, shivering as he opened for him, and tentatively slid the tip of his tongue against John’s.   _ Holy hell...

_ John exhaled a sigh of relief and moved closer, his heart restarting its mad gallop in his chest. He’d kissed a few girls and done more than that with a couple, but that was nothing compared to this. The missing piece snapped into place, setting his nerve endings alight and feeling more  _ right _ than anything he’d ever known. He sank into the kiss, propping his weight on his elbow so that he could slide his free hand along Ashton’s jaw, his fingers splaying through the slight curl at his ear. Forget a city or a house.  _ This _ was what home felt like. _

 

***

 

“What’s going on?” John asked.

Daniels shrugged a shoulder. “Fucked if I know. Maybe the goddamn war’s over and we’re great bloody heroes.”

“Ah, you’re here,” Hackett said, opening his office door and gesturing the two of them in. “Yes, in fact, we are ‘great bloody heroes’. The Alliance just contacted me. The Citadel Council elected to intervene in order to prevent full-scale galactic war. It’s over, boys.”

“I ain’t no goddamn boy,” Daniels fussed.

“You are to me,” Hackett said, unfazed.

John crossed his arms and eyed them. The two bickered like an old married couple. Like he and Ashton should have done. Envy was a bitter ash in his mouth. The war was over. Humanity was at peace once more. It was approaching time to recreate himself again. ‘Sarkovsky’ was too high-profile. Time to let the furor around him fade and start the cycle over. Again.

“I’ll start working on the IDs,” John offered. “Any ideas or preferences for this go-around?”

“Hold off for now,” Hackett said. “Let the circus die down. Let the mob forget our names and our faces.” He took a seat, waiting for them to join before clasping his hands in front of him on the desk. John sat across from him while Daniels moved to kneel beside him, resting his head against the vampire’s thigh with a contented sigh.

“This is about more than the war,” John surmised.

“I think it’s possible that this could open the door to allowing us to reveal our existence,” Hackett said. “If this peace holds and if humanity can accept multiple races of alien species, they presumably should also be able to accept us.”

“There’s a difference between accepting an outside species that looks different and comes from somewhere else and accepting one that’s been hiding among you since time began and has the ability to kill large numbers of you in a lifetime,” Daniels said. “Humans don’t like other humans to be different. Makes ‘em goddamn uncomfortable is what it does.”

“Yes, but they’re going to have to deal with that no matter what. Have either of you heard about the new group of humans said to be exhibiting some sort of telekinetic ability?” Hackett asked, his blue eyes sparkling.

“No,” Shepard answered.

“‘Biotics,’ they’re calling it. Thus far, it’s exhibiting in only a small number of children, but if this is some sort of evolutionary leap or the result of something to do with space travel, we can expect to see more. If humans can accept telekinesis, they can damn well accept us. My guess is that given the speed at which things are changing in the world, we could expect biotics to be an integrated part of society within a few decades. After that, it wouldn’t be too far a stretch to think that we might get rights of our own and be able to stop hiding.”

“And how do you want to handle the interim?” John asked.

“Generic IDs and credentials this time. We spend a couple decades flying under the radar, and then we can move up again. “Let Reeves and Sarkovsky fade into the woodwork. But when we do formulate new lives for ourselves, I want to go back to my roots. I think it’s been long enough that Steven Hackett can be dredged up again, and John Shepard is a common enough name that you shouldn’t find any shortage of others with the same name.” He looked down at Daniels. “And you can be anyone you want, should you decide to stay with us. In fact, your face is timeless enough that you could likely keep your current identity and simply add some gray to your hair. You’re notable enough that I’m hesitant to change who you are too often.”

The other man laughed. “‘Timeless,’ he says. ‘Notable.’ Stick out like a sore goddamn thumb’s what I do.”

Hackett drew a finger down his servant’s cheek, engaging in the silent communication that existed between a vampire and his thrall. Daniels shrugged. “I’ll keep my name for now and change when you do again. I’ve always fancied Zaeed Massani.”


	4. Missed Opportunities

**June 30, 2183**

**Alchera, Amada System, Omega Nebula**

 

_ ‘Fake your death,’ they said. ‘It’ll be simple,’ they said. _

John roared in pain as his battered body crashed into the ice. Faking his death had  _ not _ been anything he would qualify as ‘simple,’ though he doubted an attack on the  _ Normandy _ by an unknown ship had been part of Steven’s plan. He rolled onto his belly with a grunt, wondering if it would damage him to breathe Alchera’s methane and ammonia atmosphere. He’d find out soon enough. His seals were shit--that much, at least, had gone according to plan--and he’d reflexively sucked in a breath when he hit. 

What he could see of the planet was beautiful, but it smelled like a goddamn outhouse. Between the air and the stench of the charred ablative plating on his armor and the burning rubble raining down around him, he was reminded of the thick clouds of piss and shit-scented smoke from burning latrine waste in the desert. One of the first things that smelled ‘normal’ since he’d been turned, and it was  _ this _ .

He groaned as he pushed himself to his hands and knees, looking up at the massive chunks of his ship raining down around him. Something hit with a crash and spew of ice and snow to his right. He needed to find some kind of shelter. The fall through atmo hadn’t killed him, though it had certainly tried its damnedest, but he was under no illusion that he’d survive getting crushed under hundreds of tons of starship. His boots scraped against the ice as he looked around. There! The goddamned Mako. Of course it had made it.

He dragged himself over to the tank and wrenched a door open, clambering inside. He collapsed back against the seat, taking stock. His armor had taken the brunt of the heat, but there was a section of skin over his arm that was a bright pink and slightly tender to the touch. His foot was broken, but didn’t seem to be displaced, so it would heal on its own. His shoulder was out of socket and that was going to be a pain in the ass to fix. Everything fucking hurt. His fangs caught on his lip, an automatic response to trauma.

Where the hell was Mikhailovich? Why hadn’t he closed in and engaged? Sure, the enemy ship had cut through the  _ Normandy _ like butter, but she was just a frigate. He couldn’t lie; the attack was convenient for his purposes, but he was the only one meant to ‘die.’ His people were supposed to be safe. He had no idea how many had gotten to safety and how many had perished, but it was too many. At least Joker and Liara had made it off. He’d seen to that. Joker was the best pilot he’d ever met and Liara could live another thousand years. Call him selfish, but he needed to know she was out there, someone with a pulse he could call up for a visit for his foreseeable future and not have to hide. She gave him a sense of normalcy, and he’d have been royally pissed if she’d died.

Mikhailovich should have been monitoring them, which meant that he should have seen the ship on the long-range scanners, which meant that he’d seen it and chosen to do nothing. John had never tried to deny that he was a ruthless bastard about as cold as the ice planet he was currently sitting on, but Mikhailovich had lived long enough to become a soulless monster. Sacrificing some to save more was a call he could make offhand. Sacrificing some to save a more vital one was likewise simple. But sacrificing a shipful of people just to throw the Shadow Broker off his tail when there were other options? That was frigid even for him.

That bastard was still pissed about being overridden with regards to the  _ Normandy _ . He and Steven had gone round and round over it, but as admiral of the Fifth Fleet, it had been Hackett’s decision to make. Mikhailovich was likewise put out that Hackett had managed to outrank him. He was older than both John and Steven combined and had grown accustomed to being able to manipulate humans into getting what he wanted.

Steven and--Boris? Peter? Ivan? John couldn’t remember which name he was using now--had been rivals for a century before John had been born. Steven hadn’t been fond of the idea of assigning John and the  _ Normandy _ to the 63rd Scout Flotilla under his command, but had seen it as better than having him under a human with less experience. He’d been relieved when John had been made a Spectre, but Mikhailovich had yet to let it go. Vampires, he’d discovered, held grudges like krogan.

The burns on his skin were beginning to fade when he heard a shuttle land nearby. His shoulder was still out of socket, but the bones in his feet were no longer grinding together. He exited the Mako and waited until the shuttle door opened to reveal an Alliance soldier who gestured for him to board. The man didn’t speak during the short journey to the waiting ship and John didn’t try to engage him.

The shuttle docked and the pilot escorted him through a maze of narrow passages to an empty elevator that lumbered through deck after deck of the cruiser. He’d been on them often enough for the layout to be familiar, but still wondered at them when he first came aboard. When he’d been born, space travel was still in its infancy. By the time he’d been turned, humans had yet to set foot on Mars and spaceships were still relatively small. To be on board the equivalent of a seafaring warship in outer space was something he’d only dreamed of in fantasies.

The lift came to a stop and the soldier led him down another series of passages containing crew quarters, an officers’ mess, and the officers’ cabins. He stopped and knocked on a door at the end of a passageway before turning and leaving without a word. The door slid open and John entered, finding Mikhailovich seated at a table with a heavy paper book spread open in front of him. A human male knelt at his feet with his back straight and head bowed under the weight of a heavy gold-plated collar. The man didn’t look up when John entered, but the muscles in his jaw flexed visibly.

Unlike Zaeed’s casual comfort with Steven on the rare occasions when he chose to sit at his feet, this man was reserved and completely controlled. John couldn’t see his face, but his presence and close-cropped blonde hair told him he was a soldier despite the lean build advertised by his lack of a shirt and pants in the cool cabin. A number of raised welts criss-crossed his back. His hands rested palm-up on his thighs with his long, slender fingers slightly curled. His wrists were likewise burdened with thick, gold-plated cuffs attached to each other by a short chain. His bare feet were stacked neatly together under his ass and that, at least, was covered by a pair of silk boxers.

John suppressed an eye roll. It wasn’t uncommon for vampires to have humans who willingly donated to them and some--like Hackett--had human companions, but a subset took it a step further. They tended to be older, prideful vamps who liked the rush of power they got from subordinating and virtually enslaving humans. For them, it was a status symbol and they chose only young and attractive humans for the position. 

John himself wouldn’t have chosen such gaudy trappings, but had they been in private, he wouldn’t particularly see anything wrong with the picture in front of him as long as the human was there willingly, and he wasn’t so certain that he was. That Mikhailovich was displaying the man in front of a complete stranger in a place where he should have had at least a measure of power told John everything he needed to know about the admiral.

Mikhailovich turned a page and placed a bookmark before looking up from the book to acknowledge him. “Commander Shepard. I see you’re alive as planned.”

“There was no fucking part of that bullshit that went according to plan,” John said through gritted teeth. “Where the hell were you? Why didn’t you back us up?”   

“The goal was to convince the galaxy you were dead, was it not?” Mikhailovich said mildly. “To that end, the attack was timely. From the survivors’ reports, you put on a good show. They’re convinced they watched you die. They called for rescue efforts, of course. We’ll tell them we tried, but there just wasn’t anything left to recover. A waste of resources, unfortunately, but perhaps that’ll be enough to convince the joint military council that they’re wasting money on Normandy-class frigates and put that into cruisers and fighters to replace the ones that were lost at the Citadel.”

“How many?” he asked tightly. “How many survivors?”

“Oh...thirty, I believe, not counting yourself,” the admiral answered.

“There were fifty people aboard that ship and you’re telling me that a full  _ twenty  _ are missing? Forty percent of my crew died because you chose not to step in? Is that what you’re saying?” John demanded.

“An acceptable casualty rate given that the entire ship was destroyed,” he said, waving a hand in dismissal. “They’re just humans.”

“You son of a bitch,” John ground out.

“Show some respect for your elders,” Mikhailovich snapped. “I warned you that mouth of yours was going to get you into trouble. I’ll let it slide this time. You’ve had a hell of a day. Take your armor off and sit down. There’s clothing for you on the bed. You can use the head over there to change.”

John retrieved the clothing and carried it into the small bathroom attached to the cabin. Most of his wounds had almost healed, but he was still stiff and his shoulder had yet to be corrected, so changing was a slower process than normal. The burning piss and shit stench had seeped into his underarmor and assaulted his senses again when he detached the ruined plates and began to strip. It really did smell like the desert.

 

***

 

_ “You always take me to the nicest places for date night,” Ash grumbled, waving a shifting plume of smoke out of his face and sidestepping to get away from it. _

_ “What? You don’t like this? C’mon, babe. Beautiful view, good company, a campfire. I call that a romantic date,” John laughed. Granted, the ‘beautiful view’ was the same stretch of brushy, rock-laden desert outside of Mogadishu that they’d been in for the past week and the ‘campfire’ was a burning barrel of latrine waste they’d been tasked to deal with, but the company, at least, actually was good. He didn’t know if he’d ever get the reek of burning piss and shit out of his uniform, though. _

_ “Uh-huh. Next time, I want sushi. And real clothes. And--shocking as this might seem, I know--preferably no barrels of excrement on fire.” _

_ “Picky, picky, picky,” John said, shaking his head with a grin as he pushed the stick around in the mess to keep it burning evenly. _

_ “Though you in uniform is always a treat on the eyes. Thanks for offering, but I’m all set with toasting marshmallows at the moment,” the blonde man grimaced, eyeing John’s stick. _

_ “Yeah, well. It’s called shit detail for a reason,” John said with a half-grin, suppressing the visual that tried to form. “Don’t think I’ll ever look at a campfire quite the same way again.” _

_ “Truth. Though I think I’m ok without camping. Ever. Had enough of the great outdoors to last a lifetime. Creature comforts? Yes, please. Give me indoor plumbing, room service, infinity pools…” Ashton moved away from the smoke again, bumping his hip into John’s. “Those are, by the way, in no way requirements for the honeymoon or anything.” _

_ They were far enough from camp that John didn’t hesitate to loop an arm around the smaller man’s shoulders and pull him close. He pressed his lips to Ash’s temple, ignoring the grime that coated it. “If that’s what you want for the honeymoon, that’s what we’ll do. I don’t care where we go. I just care that we’re together. When we get home, I’ll take you somewhere nice. No sand. No outhouses. Real showers. And a big fucking bed.” _

_ “Mm. Sweet talker.” Their lips pressed together softly, heedless of the grit and dry, cracked lips the desert gave them. “Maybe a beach somewhere.” _

_ “You going to skinny dip with me?” he asked with a grin, nipping lightly at him. Fuck, having him this close but being unable to really touch was wreaking havoc on him. One more month of this shit and they’d rotate out to Germany for two weeks for R&R. He didn’t intend to leave the bed until time to meet the transport back. _

_ “Like there’s any question,” Ash mumbled against his lips, wrapping his arms around John’s middle. “Though if the showers are empty when we get back, perhaps we can do a practice run. What do you say?” _

_ “We’ll be in a world of hurt if we get caught,” John murmured, shifting the rifle on his back so it didn’t bang against Ash’s hands and tucking his fingers in the other man’s waistband. “Worth it, though.” _

_ “Totally worth it. And I can be quiet. I’ve been dreaming about it lately, so it shouldn’t take me long to get there, either. Your choice, though.  _ Sir _ …”  Ash pressed their lips together again, leaning on him. _

_ John groaned and rolled his hips against him with a shiver. “Now who’s sweet talking? You know  _ exactly _ what that does to me. And if you’re too loud, I can just cover your mouth. Or find another way to quiet you.” _

_ “I give as good as I get. And I would not be opposed to being made to be quiet, babe...takes my breath away,” the smaller man teased. The firelight caught his eyes and made them glint gold. _

_ “Why, yes, I do, don’t I?” John replied, pressing their lips together again and sliding his tongue along Ashton’s. A shower couldn’t happen soon enough. _

_ The contents of the barrel belched, sending up a fresh plume of reeking smoke. They jumped apart with a sound of disgust and John resumed stirring the barrel. He caught Ash’s eye with a self-deprecating grin. Shit detail, for sure, but he’d rather be here with him than on the nicest beach without him. _

***

 

John stacked the ruined armor in the corner and returned to the cabin, taking a seat at the table across from Mikhailovich. The admiral immediately noted his limp arm. “Boy. His shoulder’s out of joint. Fix it.”

“Yes, sir,” came the dull reply, accompanied by another flex of the man's jaw. He rose gracefully and presented his manacled wrists to Mikhailovich. “May I have the use of my hands, please?”

“Yeah, yeah,” the other vampire said, reaching out to unfasten the chain linking the cuffs. The man’s flinch when the admiral’s hand brushed over his skin wouldn’t have been visible to another human, but set alarm bells ringing in John’s head.

The human kept his head down as he approached John. He hesitated before placing his hands on him. “May I?”

“Go ahead,” he said, angling his head in an attempt to see the man’s face. He was curious about the type of person who would submit himself to someone like Mikhailovich. Was he here of his own free will? Was he a vampire groupie? Or did he actually like the vamp? John suspected he’d somehow been manipulated into his current position, but there were no visible bite marks that would signify enthrallment. Theoretically, at least, he should be able to just refuse when Mikhailovich called for him.

Unless the human asked for help, there was nothing he could do about it, and pissing the vampire off by paying too much attention to his servant would be unwise. He gave an internal shrug and turned his attention back to the admiral. He had a metric shit-ton of problems at the moment, but the man wasn’t one of his. Under other circumstances, he might question further, but right now, he had twenty dead crew and a demolished ship to think about.

The man’s hands were steady as he placed one on John’s shoulder and grasped his wrist with the other to work the joint back into the socket. John let him work, asking the admiral, “The guy who escorted me. Another servant? Or just a soldier?”

“One of my best men,” he answered. “He’ll keep his mouth shut. You were never here, if that’s what you’re worried about. As to my servants, Hayes is the only one I have. Here, at least.”

John’s shoulder popped back into place and he rolled it and wiggled his fingers to test his range of motion. “Thanks,” he said as the man stepped back.

“Boy, prepare our guest a meal.”

John swore he could hear Hayes’ teeth grind together at the diminutive, but he went to a warming unit on the desk without protest. John watched as he retrieved a pouch and opened it, pouring the contents into one of the crystal glasses sitting beside it. If he didn’t bleed the man, what the hell was going on here? Was this some kind of deep D/s relationship and he was just misreading the human’s signals? He hadn’t reacted to the implication that there were others like him, but it was plausible that they were polyamorous and there were other issues at play completely unrelated to Mikhailovich’s vampirism.

“Blood packs?” John asked. “Steven advised against those.”

“Fresh,” the admiral said. “I collect them every morning and keep only the day’s supply on hand. You and your progenitor still bite, don’t you? Barbaric,” he huffed.

“How do you ‘collect’ it if not through biting?” John asked, accepting the glass from the man, who returned to his place on the floor.

“Needles, of course,” Mikhailovich said. “Much cleaner and doesn’t leave evidence. It’s foolish in this day and age to leave fang marks on your food, especially on a ship with the crew all sharing a shower. Christ, it’s like Steven taught you  _ completely  _ bass-ackwards. You’re wondering how I keep him here if I don’t have him enthralled, aren’t you? I’m considering it, but for now, he’s here by his own choice. Isn’t that right, boy?”

He nudged the man with his foot and John found himself wincing at the use of the word. He wasn’t a goddamn dog. But what the hell did John know? He was sure some of his preferences would be seen as pretty fucked up by outsiders. Maybe they’d negotiated all of it. It wasn’t his place to judge.

“You are my reason for being, sir,” Hayes answered in a hushed whisper.

Mikhailovich cocked a brow at John. “See? He knows his place.”

John gave another internal shrug and turned his attention from the man. He wasn’t entirely convinced, but it was likely his own bias was coloring his interpretations. “What now?” he asked, eyeing the warm glass in his hand.

“The survivors will be taken to the Citadel. The aliens’ governments have been notified so their families or whatever can be there if they want to. From there, my shuttle will take you to Intai’sei. I understand you have a place there. The population’s scattered enough that you should be able to remain unnoticed, but big enough that a few missing people every now and then won’t raise an alarm.”

“What the hell attacked my ship?” he asked.

“That, I can’t answer,” Mikhailovich said. “The signature the  _ Normandy _ transmitted before it went down didn’t match any known vessels and we were too far away to get a reading. We could see that  _ something _ was there, but not what it was. We didn’t even know for sure that you were under attack until the distress signal went out. We assumed at first that the ship just didn’t see you and would pass by. We’ll investigate, though. Anything that can thwart the stealth systems renders the new Normandy-class frigates obsolete already. My guess is that one of your companions leaked the specs to their government and reverse-engineered it. Whatever they used to mask their signature is tech we could use, though.”

“No one on my crew leaked the design,” John said certainly, rolling the glass between his palms and glancing down at the human again.

It was  _ weird _ to drink his blood from a glass while he was sitting  _ right there _ . John had fed from thousands of humans, some of them people he wouldn’t have touched with a ten-foot pole before he’d been turned, but this was by far one of the most bizarre meals he’d had. And Mikhailovich did this on a regular basis. He had a sudden image of the vampire making the man watch while he drank and almost pushed the glass away. He needed to feed in order to finish healing, though, and there was no telling when his next opportunity would be. He didn’t relish the idea of going through what he had on Shanxi again.

He shifted away from Hayes and looked pointedly at the desk across the room while he downed the contents of the glass. Barbaric or not, he’d stick with biting. There was something strangely twisted about Mikhailovich’s method. There was nothing romantic to him about feeding, but doing it that way was disturbingly impersonal. He would be glad to get to Intai’sei and off this ship. He’d never liked Mikhailovich, but being trapped in his cabin was making his teeth itch. He wanted to be away from the strange vampire and the enigmatic servant he kept paying far too much attention to when his mind should have been on more important things.


	5. Acceptance, or Something Like It

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NSFW

**2 September 2185**

**Normandy SR-2**

 

“Hello, Shepard,” Liara said, walking into his cabin. “I wanted to thank you again for allowing me to assist you with the Shadow Broker.”

“I should be thanking you,” John said, gesturing her in and taking a seat on the couch. “There aren’t many people in this galaxy I could call with a problem like that who’d drop everything to help.”

“Well, there  _ were _ benefits,” she said with a coy smile as she joined him. “Taking over the Broker’s network and not losing the galaxy’s best hope against the Reapers being the primary ones. I simply wish that you had told me you were alive. We were all devastated when the first  _ Normandy _ went down and we thought you’d been lost. Even I was not certain you had survived.”

“Didn’t stop you from looking,” he chuckled. “If the Broker’s people  _ had _ managed to capture me, I’m sure you’d have rescued me long before the Collectors carted me off. You were already on the right track.”

“Yes, well, your Admiral Hackett certainly did everything in his power to send me chasing after shadows, didn’t he?” the asari grumbled.

“He was just trying to protect me, Liara,” he soothed. “I follow his orders and radio silence was what he decided. I couldn’t tell the others, but I let you know as soon as I was allowed. It’s...been a long time since I had a friend I didn’t have to hide from.”

John had been resistant to the idea of allowing Liara T’Soni to mind meld with him after receiving the vision from the beacon on Eden Prime. It had become second nature to hide who and what he was and letting another person into his head went against almost two centuries of caution. However, he’d needed her expertise. He’d taken the risk. Had she revealed his secret, he’d have taken whatever measures were necessary. But she hadn’t. She’d asked more questions than he had when he’d been turned, had pointed him to reference material geared toward long-lived species, and had helped him put his existence into a perspective that made it seem a little less bleak.

Outside of Hackett and Daniels--now Zaeed Massani and holed up on the engineering deck--Liara was the only person he could truly call a friend. She had a thing for him, but he couldn’t bring himself to consider anything long-term with anyone. He was still waiting. For what, he didn’t know yet. His own Zaeed, he supposed.

She’d certainly been useful when, at the end of the Geth War, Hackett had received intel that the Shadow Broker had sent his agents for John. He’d suggested that John fake his own death and lay low until he could figure out why the Broker was pursuing him. The Collector attack on the  _ Normandy _ had been timely. It had seemed to work until the Broker had figured out his ploy. Hiding hadn’t worked, so John devised a plan to go on the offensive and Liara had been central to that plan.

They’d been unsuccessful in locating the Broker at first. And then Cerberus had approached him with the offer of intel on the Shadow Broker in exchange for his assistance in taking down the Collectors. Hackett had been attempting to convince the Defense Committee to allocate a task force to it, but had gotten little more than token resources, nothing like what Cerberus had to offer. After a few months of deliberation with Hackett, they’d decided that John would join up with them with Zaeed as backup, and John and Liara had gone after the Shadow Broker.

“And Jack?” she asked, cocking a tattooed eyebrow in a very human gesture. “Do you have to hide from her?”

“Jack,” he sighed, sitting back and draping an arm over the back of the couch. “Jack is...a unique case. I think she knows there’s  _ something _ different about me. I don’t think she’s figured out what it is yet. She doesn’t need to know. We aren’t looking for forever. Just a port in the storm for a few years.”

“You do not have to be alone, Shepard,” Liara said gently. “You may have a lifespan far longer than your own species, but many humans have had fulfilling relationships with mine. An asari partner could presumably be with you for the rest of your life. Your species is still very young. What you call immortality could simply be a lifespan more along the lines of asari or krogan than other humans. Is it more plausible to say that you will live forever or that your kind simply has not existed long enough to have found the end of your lifespan, especially when so many succumb to violent ends rather than age?”

John shrugged a shoulder. “You could be right. The oldest I’ve heard of is a century or two over a thousand years old. We don’t seem to make it much past that point, but it’s not as if I’m an authority. I know a couple of people who are like me. I haven’t exactly tried to join the club or anything.”

“There are social groups?” she asked.

“No,” he chuckled. “Euphemism.”

“Oh. It is still odd to know a human who is older than I am,” she said. “I do miss our talks on the old  _ Normandy _ .”

“So do I,” he said with a hint of a smile.

“I need to get back, but please do not be a stranger, Shepard,” she said, rising to go.

When she’d left, John made his rounds of the ship, stopping to speak with each of his crew. It had been a long time since he’d let himself attach to any of his teammates, but this group was different. None of them were military, and yet he’d come to them with a mission that was more likely to end in their deaths than survival and they’d volunteered anyway. Many of them weren’t even human and had no stake in the Collector threat. He hadn’t been able to prove at that point that they were connected to the Reapers. They’d volunteered anyway.

Suicide mission. The thought sent a thrill up his spine. Hell, the whole damn thing with the Reapers was utterly  _ exhilarating _ . The Reapers posed a legitimate threat to his survival, either by killing him directly or harvesting his food source. For the first time since he’d been turned, there was a significant risk of death, and he felt  _ alive _ . They would defeat the Reapers. But if they didn’t...if they  _ didn’t _ …

_ Ashton _ .

 

***

 

_ “We’re going to Mogadishu, boys!” John announced, walking into the day room with papers in hand. _

_ Ashton glanced up at him, brow furrowed. “Somalia, huh?” _

_ “‘Advise and assist’ is what it’s being called,” John said, “but al-Shabaab has increased activities in the region and ISIS is gaining traction as well. Somali forces need help. Officially, we’re going to train their troops and provide support and are only to engage in self-defense.” _

_ “Sounds like a snooze-fest,” Barnes yawned. _

_ No U.S. troops had been killed in action in the region since the nineties, but John wasn’t so sure that the official story was the right one. Captain Hackett had mentioned an al-Shabaab compound located in the area. Why send an entire SEAL team in if not to raid it with A&A being the cover? He glanced over at Ashton with a brow raised in question. If his suspicions were right, the other man would likely share them. _

_ The blonde man gave a quick jerk of his head to the outside and left without checking to see if he’d follow. Of course John did; he always would. He found Ashton a little ways away from the door, scanning the horizon of the naval base. “Best to take in the sights of home now,” Ash said, “because in a few days, we’ll probably be in the thick of it and ‘home’ will be a distant memory and a dream.” _

_ “That’s rather fatalistic.” _

_ “Yeah, well...I...suspect the  _ real _ orders are going to be made apparent when we drop boots on the ground. Why a full SEAL team? You don’t need a full deck of cards for advising. I’m uneasy about it.” _

_ “Hackett  _ did  _ mention a compound there,” John said quietly. “But it’s nothing we don’t do all the damn time. Still, the back of my neck’s prickling and that’s never a good sign. And we both know what happened the last time we went in hot there. Hell, the Mogadishu Mile’s famous for a reason. If an hour-long down and back op can go _ that _ bad… I mean, we’ve evolved strategies and tactics since then, but still. I don’t like it.” _

_ “....Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. If it comes down to us holding the line, you know I’ve got your six. Sniper teams tend to have bad luck there. Can’t help feeling like it’s a suicide mission. At least we’ll go together, though.” _

_ “Story of our lives. Right, baby?” he said. “And when we get home, we can start planning the rest of it.” _

_ Ashton glanced at the door a moment before sliding his arms around John, tucking under his and resting his head on John’s shoulder. “Right,” came the quiet reply. “Here’s the first day of the rest of our lives. However long they may be.” _

_ “Love you,” he murmured against his hair. “Always and forever.” _

 

***

 

He’d told Hackett he’d never get over Ashton, and he hadn’t. This thing he had going with Jack, whatever it was, was better than being alone, though. John didn't tell her everything, but neither did he have to pretend with her. He didn't have to be the big goddamn hero, the galaxy's best hope, the savior of the Citadel, the Butcher of Torfan, or any of the other names that had been applied to him throughout his extended life. She didn't have to pretend, either. Everything she'd seen and done, he'd done worse. He saw through her bullshit and she saw through his.

When they were together, all of the rest of it just faded away and they could be who they truly were: two unrepentantly fucked up individuals who danced in the dark with each other's demons. He ruled hers and calmed the storm. She faced his and gave him purpose. Together, the butcher and the convict danced with death and found the only kind of peace they could understand. It wasn’t what he’d had with Ashton. It wasn’t even what he wanted. It was, however, a refreshing change from the sheer  _ aloneness  _ that he’d lived with since his world had upended with a shatter of glass and steel.

He found her in the cargo bay, throwing empty crates around with her biotics. She’d calmed down some since they’d blown up the Teltin facility, but he’d learned that ‘calm’ was a relative word when applied to Jack, especially when Miranda was around. He understood where her vitriol toward the Cerberus agent came from, but their constant infighting was irritating and he was caught in the middle. Working cooperatively with Miranda meant less time spent dealing directly with the Illusive Man and a smoother-running ship. He’d never had a more competent XO. Jack, however, couldn’t see past her bitterness to accept that and he wasn’t willing to openly side with Miranda and lose the one person who’d made him feel somewhat human again. So, he kept the peace between them where he could and soothed Jack where he couldn’t.

“What do you want?” she snarled when he approached.  

He decided on the truth. “To survive. And get my dick wet.”

“You’re gonna have to work for that,” she muttered, sending another shockwave rolling into a crate.

“Wouldn’t have it any other way,” he said, kicking his boots off.

They circled each other in the shuttle bay with knives in hand and her biotics crashing like lightning against the dull gray sky of the bulkhead. He flipped his knife and darted in, slashing out in a flash of steel. A line of red bloomed on her arm, heady and alluring. A moment later, he caught her vicious grin and pulled the hilt of her knife from the soft spot in his shoulder below his clavicle with a sneering smile that kept his fangs covered. Fuck, he wanted her.

He reached out to grapple her to the ground, but broke off and rolled away as a shockwave roared toward him in a booming series. He responded by slamming her back into a crate and felt a rush of satisfaction at her sharp curse as the crate splintered.  _ Now  _ he had her. Her amp had to cool down and he had her knife. He outweighed her by over forty kilograms and had speed to boot.

She shoved him back and kicked off of the crate, coming in low. Their bodies clashed. His eyes widened momentarily as he realized he'd underestimated the power of the new amp he'd helped her get before the run on the Collector base. She used her biotics to lift him off of his feet and threw him over her shoulder. He was rolling as he hit the ground, but she'd sprung out of reach by the time he regained his feet.

His eyes narrowed. "Good one," he grunted.

"Fuck you, Shepard," she snarled. He deflected the knife she threw without sparing a moment to wonder where it had come from. She was always armed to the teeth, he reflected as he fingered the healed spot she’d hit when he'd surprised her in the shower a few weeks before. Fortunately, Chakwas and Miranda had concocted a story about cybernetics and skin weaves, which meant he no longer had to reopen healed wounds to cover up his rapid healing.

"Oh, I plan to," he assured her as he feinted and lashed out with a foot. He caught her ankle and tugged. She went down with a thud and a roar. Her hands glowed a tell-tale blue, but before she could throw him off of her, he reached up and popped out her amp.

"Motherfucker!" she snarled.

"Didn't realize you'd given birth," he taunted as he lifted her from the ground by the straps on her harness. That was convenient.

"That was just lame, Commander," she sneered as she raked her boot down his shin. He lifted her higher so that she could move only on her tiptoes and wrenched her arm up behind her back. He released the leather strap and jerked her pants down. His belt caught for a moment before he freed himself only to sheath in her in a rough stroke. His hand went around her throat, applying just enough pressure to be sure she felt it and recognized the inherent threat.

A knot inside of him that he hadn't recognized was there shattered when she sighed and went limp against him. The hand digging its nails into his wrist relaxed. Her thumb gave a betraying brush across his skin. Their sighs of relief exploded into the bay. He curled over her, keeping her back pressed solidly into his chest as he bent her and thrust forcefully. She gasped, rolling her hips up to meet him and take him deeper still. Nothing he did to her was ever too much. He never released his full strength on her, but he suspected she could take far more than he’d given her yet. He could lose himself in her without having to worry and that was freeing.

"The minute all of this is over, we're going pirate," he vowed, slamming into her now. She mewled and cursed and writhed against his hold. When she turned her head and bit his throat, leaving a neat circle of teeth marks, he tightened his hold on her neck, resisting the urge to return the bite. He released her arm and slapped his hand down on the crate in front of them to give him leverage as she tightened around him.

Her freed hand reached up to grip what she could of his buzzed hair and pulled hard. He growled low in his throat and pounded into her. They were too exposed to take their time here, so he reached up and sharply tweaked her nipple beneath the leather strap covering it. She cried out and convulsed around him. He took her weight as her legs wrapped back around his and pounded violently into her as his control broke. He released inside of her, consciously panting against the back of her neck. Even now, he couldn’t allow himself to forget what he was pretending to be.

Slowly, her legs slid down his as he lowered her down his body. She leaned into his hold, her head falling back onto his shoulder as he continued to grip her throat. He felt the tremors begin to wrack her body. He wrapped his arm around her trim waist, pressing kisses against the brightly colored skin behind her ear. "...I’ve got you," he murmured.  It had been a damn long time since a human had moved him for anything more than momentary exasperation or amusement. “It’s okay to let go, I’ve got you.”

“Yeah, yeah.” He heard and ignored the tears in her voice as she ground out, "Go to hell.  Such a fucking Boy Scout."

He snorted and shook his head. It wasn’t love. She wasn’t Ashton. But for now, it was enough.


	6. A Sign of the Times

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NSFW. And this is where the DV tag comes in. Unrelated to the smut.

**30 June 2187**

**Silversun Strip, Citadel**

 

John knew that Jack was in the apartment before he’d crossed the threshold. The pungent scent of alcohol was ripe in the air, concentrated around a darkened spot on the carpet that the cleaning mech was attempting to remedy. Her unique scent trailed from the bar to the stairs and he followed it, the rush of the shower announcing her location. Her clothing lay strewn around the room, ripped off in a hurricane of pain and rage. He’d become very familiar with her mercurial moods. She wouldn’t be playing with Eezo or challenging him to a match at the arena today.

He found her sitting on the floor of the shower with her decorated arms wrapped around her knees and her dark hair plastered around her face. A keening wail rose in her chest. Sobs tore from her like shards of glass. The back of her head met the cool tile of the wall with a thud before dropping to her knees again as she pressed her hands over her ears, scraping her fingers against the shorn sides of her head.

That could only mean one thing:  she’d lost another one.That made three in the past few weeks since he’d rescued them from Grissom Academy and decided to send the kids to the front lines. It was unfortunate, but he didn’t regret the call he’d made. They needed everyone they could get to fight the Reapers and the kids were trained and undeniably eager to help. Casualties were to be expected in wartime. That didn’t make the losses any easier for her to bear.

John stripped out of his uniform and slid down the wall to sit beside her, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. She turned her head away and screwed her eyes shut, presumably so that he couldn't see the tears that mingled with the water raining down on them. He wasn't about to tolerate her hiding from him, though. She’d come here for comfort, despite the fact that it was his choice that had ultimately caused her pain. He’d damn well give her what she needed.

He buried a hand in her hair and wrenched her head around, forcing her to face him. His lips crushed into hers and he pulled her into his lap. She scrambled closer to him, raking her nails down his chest. His teeth scraped her lip, followed by a gentle slide of his tongue over the wound. He knew she didn't want gentle, but he was in control. If that was what he chose to give, then that was what she would damn well accept. It was the only way that she could accept it from him. He had to break down her walls before she would open to him. This dance, too, had become familiar.

His arm banded around her waist as he lifted her onto her knees and pulled her back down to him on a rough thrust. Her skin and muscle yielded to him as thoroughly as the rest of her had, enveloping him in her wet heat. Long fingers dug into her hips, gripping but not restraining as she rode him with wild abandon and a complete lack of finesse.

The darkness poured from her. He drank it in as he always did, jerking up into her to force all of it out. His name came to him on panting breaths. Her nails scored his skin, leaving white lines he didn’t care for but knew better than to object to in the moment. Her teeth dug into his flesh, a reversal of what could have been had she known what he was. He lifted her from the shower and carried her into the bedroom. They went to the floor where he covered her with his body. Their hips met with a slick slap that could be heard over the roar of the still-flowing shower.

His hand locked around her throat. She tightened around him and expelled his name on a ragged scream of rage and pain and need. He shouted her name as he shuddered and pulsed into her. She clung to him then, holding him as though he was the last solid point in a rapidly crumbling world. Only now with the storm behind them could she stand the soft caress of his hand over her hip, the gentle pressure of his lips on hers, the comforting slide of his tongue in her mouth. Only now could her fingers skim over his back, tracing the tattoo on his shoulder that matched the one on her back, that outward sign that marked them as belonging to one another, at least for now. It would fade in time, but would last long enough to be a reminder once he inevitably left her to lay low until Commander Shepard was a memory and he could reasonably pass for his own son or nephew.

He rose and drew her up with him, keeping an arm around her as he returned to the bathroom to turn off the shower. He procured a towel from the cabinet and dried her thoroughly. When they were dry, he led her to his bed and pulled her into his arms. She stared blankly at the wall, likely thinking of her lost student.

He didn't speak or try to hold her when she leaned over to rummage through the bag she'd thrown beside the bed. He watched as she went through a process that was now more ritual than procedure. His fingers trailed over her hip and up her spine, letting her know he was there as he watched her contort herself and apply the ink to the bare patch of skin over her ankle. He knew what it meant and remained silent while she mourned in her own way.

When it was complete, he asked quietly, "A unicorn?"

Her answer was a terse, simple, "Rodriguez."

A few hours later, he lay on his back, letting his mind drift. He was capable of sleeping, but avoided doing so with a partner since his heart and breathing tended to stop without his semi-conscious control over it. He’d discovered it panicked his partners to wake up next to what looked for all the world like a dead body. The half-conscious state he’d learned to maintain served him well enough for rest and allowed him to revisit days gone by.

 

*** 

 

_ “I’ll be just a minute, if you don’t mind. Just a quick rinse-off.” Ashton disappeared down the hall in the bathroom down the short hall from his bedroom, John lounging on his bed. They’d just gotten back from running five miles and his legs were almost jelly; it was nice to be able to relax. Once they’d decided to enlist, they talked to a recruiter and started working out to meet the minimum physical requirements for when they actually signed on the dotted line. They kept each other accountable and pushed each other to go just a little longer, just a bit further, ‘keep it up, we can do this,’ and it worked like a charm, Ashton always a half-step ahead and teasing him to keep up. _

_ John stacked his hands under his head while he waited for him to return, indulging himself in imagining the soapy water running over Ashton’s skin. They’d seen each other in the showers after gym classes, of course, so he had plenty of material to sift through. If only he had the guts to go in there and join him. Mr. and Mrs. Hayworth weren’t home, so it wasn’t like they’d get caught or anything… _

_ True to his word, Ash came back in less than five minutes, towel knotted around his lithe waist and water dripping down his tawny chest. Muscles were developing where previously there hadn’t been, and the drops sliding down his skin only pointed it out further. “You can...take one, too, you know. If you want. Mom won’t care. You’re here often enough she thinks you should have your own bedroom and change your last name to Hayworth.” _

Or I could change my name and we could  _ share _ a bedroom, _ John thought. He shook his head at himself. They were still too young to be thinking like that even if he was sure he didn’t want anyone else. Hell, they hadn’t even gone all the way yet. That was probably important before deciding to jump in with both feet. What if they tried it and he realized he didn’t actually like it with a guy? He’d feel fucking stupid then and end up hurting Ash. He pushed the ridiculous idea aside and rolled to a sitting position. _

_ “Yeah. Good idea. The shower, I mean. Not the...y’know…‘brother’ isn’t exactly what I want to call you.” _

_ Ash’s ears and neck flushed. “Yeeeahhhh, not so much. On that, we agree,” he chuckled before rolling his lips inwards a moment and toying with the fresh t-shirt he had retrieved from his closet. “...Is it bad I was almost hoping you’d’ve followed me in there?” _

_ John rubbed the back of his neck and grinned at him. “I thought about it. Wasn’t sure if you’d want me to, though.” _

_ “Um…” Ash’s tongue flicked out to moisten his lips as he dropped the t-shirt over his desk chair.  “I think it should be pretty, uh...apparent. That I would want you there.” He ducked his chin down and rubbed his nose. John’s eyes trailed down with his gaze.  _ Ah.

_ He bit his lip and reached out, wrapping a hand around Ash’s hip and tugging him between his legs. His lips brushed over Ash’s belly button as he whispered, “I want to be there. You want to follow me into mine?” _

_ “Uh-uh,” Ash whispered. “I’ll follow you in it after, though. Wouldn’t do to be all sweaty again.”   _

_ He dropped the towel. _

_ John’s breath caught in his throat, and he sat back to drink in the sight of him before looking up at him again. “You’re sure?” he asked softly. _

_ “I am if you are,” came the quiet reply. “If you don’t want to, that’s...that’s perfectly fine, and I won’t push you for it.” _

_ John glanced down at his gym shorts with a wry grin. “I think it’s pretty obvious I do.” He leaned forward and trailed his lips over Ash’s belly again before reaching up to tug him down for a kiss. _

_ “Stop using approximations of my own words against me,” Ash murmured against his lips, straddling him.   _

_ The dampness from his skin made John’s shirt cling uncomfortably to his own, so he drew back to strip it off and slid his arms around the other boy’s waist. “Whatcha gonna do about it?” he smirked. Ash bit his lower lip and grinned at him, shoving him gently onto his back. _

_ “Oh, I don’t know…” he teased, rubbing the tips of their noses together as he rolled his body along John’s. “Tease the ever-loving shit out of you?” His slender fingers cupped John’s trapped length in his shorts, sliding over the silky nylon. _

_ John inhaled sharply, pressing forward into his hand. “I think that’s an acceptable response,” he breathed, gently catching Ash’s lip between his teeth. His fingers drew small patterns over the boy’s satiny skin. He was sure Ashton could feel his heart pounding in his chest. He wanted him so fucking bad, but he didn’t know what the hell he was doing. Nerves and anticipation raced under his skin. _

_ “Mmph...sh-shorts. Need them off... _ pleeeease _ …” the breathy plea ghosted down his neck between soft kisses. Gentle fingers plucked at his waistband and  something  warm and smooth traced itself along his thigh, leaving a small trail of coolness on his skin, marking where it had been. _

_ John shifted, tugging his shorts down and letting them drop on the floor around his feet. His hands roamed over Ash’s back, tracing the muscles, as his lips grazed over the boy’s jaw to his earlobe. His pulse hammered in his ears at the realization that they were both finally completely naked and alone together. This was it and he so wanted to get it right. _

_ “I’ve...never done this before,” he admitted quietly. “I don’t want to, y’know, hurt you or anything.” _

_ Warm lips captured his with a soft kiss, their hips rolling together slowly. “That’s ok. We’ll figure it out.” Another kiss, more insistent this time, made his mind go momentarily blank. “Besides,” Ash teased, rubbing their noses together again, “Why d’you think you’d be hurting  _ me _? Aren’t you concerned about the possibility of me hurting  _ you _?” A gentle pinch on his asscheek made him jump and roll their groins together again. Ash shivered and moaned softly against his neck. _

_ The back of his neck blazed. “I...yeah, I guess you’re right. We can do that if you want. I just...I’ve never had anything... _ there _ , y’know?” _

_ “I’m just teasing. I...have. And I really... _ really _...want to feel you. There, I mean.” Ash shifted himself up a little and reached behind him, cupping John’s length against his cleft and sliding himself along it.  “God...” _

_ John shivered, rolling his hips with him. His skin tingled from his scalp to his toes and he had to remind himself he couldn’t just roll him over and go at it right then and there. He slid his hands down to cup the muscle of Ash’s ass, and he flicked his tongue over his lips. He wanted to  _ drown _ himself in him and wasn’t  _ that _ an odd sensation. An amazing one, but more intense than anything he’d ever experienced before. _

_ Ash groaned, opening for the kiss and fell over onto his side, pulling John over and on top of him, legs clasped around his waist. “Remember when you had your hand there?” he whispered, breathless. John nodded. “Same thing. Just go slow.” _

_ “Don’t I need to, y’know, prep?” John asked, the blush radiating over his scalp. He was glad one of them knew what he was doing here, but he really wished he’d done some sort of research beyond just watching a shit ton of porn. _

_ Small hands cupped his face, soft lips brushing his. “Your hand  _ will _ be the prep. Unless you want me to do it to myself. I…” his ears flushed again. “...I thought about doing it in the shower, but it would have taken a lot longer, and I didn’t want to leave you all alone for long, and...I...didn’t want to touch myself. Saving that for...you. God, that sounds stupid out loud,” he groaned, burying his face in John’s shoulder. “I’m sorry.” _

_ He stroked down Ashton’s torso, fingers dancing over the ridges of muscle in his abdomen and down through the neatly-trimmed hair below. “It’s not stupid,” John said, cradling the back of his head. “You’ve got nothing to be sorry for.” _

_ “So magnanimous,” Ash teased, nipping his lower lip as he pressed forward in John’s hand. “Lube’s in my nightstand, if you want.” _

_ “‘Magnanimous?’” he asked, rummaging in the drawer for the lube. “I’m trying to reassure you, you goose.” He grinned and nipped at Ash’s lip in return. The pop of the cap seemed loud in the otherwise-quiet room, and his hands trembled slightly as he drizzled the fluid onto his fingers and rubbed them together to warm it up. _

_ “‘Goose?’” Ashton smiled coyly, “I am pigeon liver’d and lack gall, sir.” He gasped lightly and his eyes fluttered as John slowly pressed a finger in. “And thou, thou art ‘magnanimous’ to me by-” He moaned softly, legs tightening around his waist while John slid further inside, letting him adjust. “-by forgiving me for my sorrow.” Ash’s lips were flushed a dusky pink, begging to be kissed as they parted with his small moans. “Or p’rhaps,  _ sir _ , it is the word itself that needs defining.” John stroked another finger around his entrance before slowly adding it. “‘Chivalrous.’ ‘Noble.’ ‘Benevolent.’ ‘Princely’ ... _ God _ , John…” Each word was a silken sigh against his ears,  punctuating every roll of Ash’s hips back on his hand, his fingers digging into John’s shoulders. _

I am  _ definitely _ the dumb jock in this relationship _ , John thought with amusement. He had no idea what he was talking about, but figured he didn’t particularly need to right this moment. He kissed him softly, murmuring, “I’m either doing something  _ very _ right or  _ very _ wrong if you can talk like that. What I  _ do _ know, though, is that you’re the prince.” _

_ “Swept you off your feet, did I?” Ash’s eyes closed and his head tipped back into the pillows, pressing his length along John’s stomach. _

_ John smirked, trailing his lips down Ashton’s exposed neck and lower, his tongue flicking out to trace the divot in his crown. If he could still form coherent sentences, John clearly wasn’t doing his job. His lips parted, wrapping around Ash and taking him into his mouth. “Mmhm.” _

_ “Oh, FUCK!” his boyfriend shouted, writhing up against his mouth before clapping his hands over his own. John noted with equal parts satisfaction and amusement that Ash’s thighs trembled on either side of his head. _

_ His mouth moved in time with the fingers stroking along his hot, silky walls. He tried imagining what it was going to feel like to bury himself in him, but his imagination failed him. Heaven, that’s what it would be. Any question he might have had about whether he actually wanted to do this or not was gone. He loved everything about it from the clean scent of his skin to the salty tang against his tongue. This was Ashton,  _ his _ Ashton. Of course it was going to be right. _

_ “John...John, please?” Frantic tugging on his arms pulled him messily off, kissing Ash’s leaking tip before lipping his way up the slender chest. _

_ John propped himself with his elbows on either side of his boyfriend’s head, dipping down to kiss him softly before whispering, “You’re sure?” _

_ “More than anything. Make me yours,” came the hushed reply against his lips. _

_ John shuddered at his words, his lips moving gently over Ash’s as he wrapped a hand around himself and pressed gingerly at his entrance. A soft moan escaped him at the sensation and he drew his head back just enough to look him in the eye as he slowly entered him. It took every bit of willpower he possessed not to simply sink into the other boy, but Ashton’s trusting expression was enough to ensure his control. No way in hell was he going to fuck this up even if every centimeter felt like a foray into paradise. _

_ His thought from earlier flashed across his mind again and this time, he didn’t push it away. They weren’t ready for it yet, of course, but someday...someday he was going to marry him. _

 

***

 

John felt the warm body next to him shift, sitting up in bed and straddling him. He reached for Ashton’s hips to steady him when the first blow landed beside his nose with enough power behind it to make him wince. A second caught him in the eye. He hissed before he could catch himself, hands flying up to catch his attacker’s as his eyes opened, the familiar red tinge turning the woman’s features a ruddy pink. Or perhaps that was her own blood rushing to her cheeks as she struggled to free herself from his gasp, panting sobs exploding from her lips. She thrashed, curses falling around him like rain. 

“Jack!” he snapped, the dream-like memory fading away. “What the hell are you doing?”

At the sound of his voice, she slumped, slipping off of him to curl up on her side, her knees drawn up to her chest. He rolled to face her, propping on an elbow with a hand on her hip. Her eyes were closed, tears darkening her lashes. Asleep. She was still asleep. The war was taking its toll on her, wearing down the careful veneer of sanity she’d crafted to reveal the disturbed child lying in wait below the surface. He gathered her to him, murmuring softly in an attempt to soothe whatever nightmares were plaguing her.

It would be so much easier to help her if he turned or enthralled her, but he wasn’t looking for a permanent connection here. Sure, he wouldn’t have to worry about her as much. He wouldn’t need to wonder what she was thinking or what to say or do to calm her. He would be able to see her thoughts the way Hackett did his or Zaeed’s. It would give them more than a handful of years before he had to leave her. Spending another two centuries alone didn’t appeal to him, but neither did leaving behind a trail of broken hearts as he moved around the galaxy every decade or so.

It was a ridiculous idea borne of future loneliness. She didn’t even know what he was. As far as Jack knew, he was as human as she. The more logical course of action then would be to tell her. If she knew, she might let him drink from her and he would be able to stop hunting for meals, at least when they were together. They could drop the pretense of an open relationship if he could get what he needed at home rather than requiring the freedom to come and go in order to hunt while calling it a search for sex. She didn’t seem to mind the openness, but perhaps it would make her feel more secure if she knew he wasn’t seeking other partners.

On the other hand, learning that her boyfriend was a supernatural creature relegated to myths and legends in the human mind might be the thing that pushed her over the edge. She was already teetering on the brink. She needed stability more than anything else and revealing his nature to her could provide the opposite. He couldn’t risk making things worse for her, especially not now. After the war, then. Once it was over, if they both survived, he’d tell her what he was.

And maybe if he knew that he had someone to come home to for more than a short window of time, he could finally lay Ashton to rest. Maybe he  _ could _ move on and find happiness somewhere else. Jack was troubled, yes. The evidence of that would be looking him in the mirror in the morning when dead blood seeped from broken capillaries to pool against his skin, creating bruises where she’d struck. He wouldn’t be able to feed again for at least a week. Feeding would heal them and would draw suspicion. But alongside the damage to her psyche was a woman he’d come to admire. He cared about her, even when her past threw her into unconscious outbursts.

Yes, after the war. After the war, he’d tell her.


	7. I'll Follow You Into the Dark

**3 January 2188**

**Crucible, Citadel**

 

John clutched his pistol in a bloody hand, looking between the options the holographic child had presented. The stale air wheezed in and out of his lungs in an attempt to drag oxygen to his muddled brain. The red haze all but obscured his vision, lending a sinister cast to the beam of light in front of him. He ached in ways he hadn’t experienced since he’d been turned. His skin was charred, bones broken, a gaping wound reminiscent of the RPG round torn into his abdomen. He wouldn’t die--he thought--but he was close enough to feel utterly, painfully fucking  _ alive _ .

He probably should have fed from Anderson before the man’s heart stopped. The scent of copious amounts of fresh blood had been almost overwhelming. He hadn’t been able to bring himself to do it, though, focusing instead on the corrupted odor of The Illusive Man’s. Anderson deserved better than to be reduced to a mere food source, even if it could have significantly hastened his healing process. The man had held Earth for months in one of the most heavily occupied territories on the planet. John wouldn’t turn him to a meal. He’d considered actually turning him, but he didn’t trust his ability to stop if he started, given how serious his injuries were and how strong the craving was, and he doubted he would survive the change, anyway.

The child continued talking, but John tuned him out. He knew what he needed to know. Control: immortality, which he already had and didn’t want. He’d already changed so much from the man he’d been. Some of the things he’d done and decisions he’d made would have horrified him prior to his turning. Still, he didn’t believe he’d crossed fully into monster territory yet. Acquiring that kind of power, though, would fully corrupt him.

Besides, he was under no illusion that his control would last. Upon assimilating with the Reapers, they would very likely be able to shift his perceptions enough to convince him that they were right. It might take centuries or even millennia, but they were patient. No. They’d fought hard to get the Illusive Man here for that reason and the child even admitted the Reapers would have been able to use that to control him. John wasn’t enough of a narcissist to believe that he would be any different.

Synthesis:  If he joined humans and Reapers, there would be no need for war, but Mordin had warned him against jumping a species’ evolution too much, too quickly. The krogan were a prime example. The lure, though, was strong. It would take everything he had. He would be released, free to roam whatever afterlife there might be and to find the man he couldn’t stop loving even after his heart had stopped beating on its own. No. Saren had proposed the same thing, an idea that had come from the Reapers.

He shuffled toward the red tube, dragging a numb foot behind him, sticky fingers wrapped around the pistol grip. Thick, lukewarm blood spilled out over the hand clamped to his torso. He eyed the child, tempted to just shoot the damn thing, but bullets wouldn’t work on a holo. A part of him wanted to tell it to go to hell, that they’d beat the Reapers on their own, but a single look past the arms of the Citadel told the futility of that path. Destroying the Reapers, no matter what it might do to EDI and the geth, was the only option. If it thought genocide of one race to save the rest was a deterrent, it hadn’t looked at his track record.

At first, his arm resisted the signals from his starved brain, refusing to lift the meager weight of the pistol. He grunted, forcing the limb to obey, and dragged aching breaths of dead air into his lungs, concentrating on his heartbeat, pushing oxygen through his body. His steps became more certain, his torso straightening, his trembling arm raising and finger tightening on the trigger. The first sparks from the tube spelled his death. Fire could kill a vampire.

Still, he progressed, images of the humans he’d come to care about and consider his own flitting across his mind. It finally settled on two:  Jack, the woman he’d learned to love, if not in the same all-consuming, undying way as the one before her; and Ashton, the man he’d loved through two lifetimes, the one that he could now admit he’d been waiting for all this time, the one he’d never found again.  _ As long as we both shall live _ . That was the promise he’d made. But Ash was gone and soon, neither of them would be living in any sense of the word. That was acceptable. They’d be together again. He had to believe that. If he didn’t, he didn’t know if he could keep walking forward into the flames.

 

***

 

_ Cool air washed over John’s heated, damp skin, raising gooseflesh where Ashton’s warmth wasn’t countering it. The other man was tucked in his customary position under his arm. He drew in a languorous breath, nuzzling Ash’s hair with his chin, the clean sandalwood scent of his shampoo filling his nostrils. His arm tightened around the other man, fingers drawing lazy circles on his hip in the dim room. _

_ Ash mumbled something into his neck, unintelligible and sleepy. “Didn’t catch that, baby. What?” he asked, tightening his arm around the smaller man. _

_ “Said I wish we could just stay like this forever… You’re so comf’rt’ble….mm.” _

_ “Me, too. Sounds like a perfect life to me,”  John said, kissing the top of his head. It really did. He could easily picture them living together, working alongside each other until they retired, sharing bills and housework and bitching over whose turn it was to do the dishes. Hell, why not? They’d already been together for…right around fifteen years, if he’d done the math right. And it was legal now. Don’t Ask Don’t Tell had been revoked. Same-sex couples had the same options as everybody else. They  _ could  _ do it. _

_ He threaded his fingers through Ash’s hair, tipping the other man’s face back and searching his eyes. “Marry me?” _

_ “Are...are you serious?” Ashton’s voice was thick, a small furrow between his brows as their gazes locked. _

_ “Completely and totally. I love you, Ash. I’ve loved you since we were kids. I don’t want to imagine my life without you. So, what do you say? Marry me?” _

_ The blond man’s bottom lip wavered a moment before he surged forward and kissed him hard, small hands cupping his face. “Yes. Absolutely.  _ Yes _ , John, the answer is ‘yes’.” _

_ John’s grin made his face ache as he wrapped his arms around Ashton, holding him close. Their lips met in a dizzying flurry, and when they finally pulled back, breathless, Ash seemed to glow through the sheen of moisture in his eyes. _

 

***

 

The tube exploded, flames rolling out to engulf him. He threw an arm up to shield his face and block the blinding light. Heat enveloped him, catching on those nerve endings that weren’t already seared into silence. Jack faded away, golden hair and eyes the color of summer wheat accompanying him into the darkness. 


	8. Life, or Something Like It

**5 May 2188**

**Huerta Memorial, Citadel**

 

He woke to the hum of machinery and the astringent scent of antiseptics, vinyl gloves, bleached linens, and more types of blood than he could identify. Healthy blood, sick blood, spilled blood, bagged blood, dead blood, alien blood. Hospital. He was in a hospital. Why? There was only one doctor who could help him and she was on the  _ Normandy _ , which he’d sent away. Wasn’t she? Hadn’t he? If anyone else had gotten a look at him or any of his records, his secret was out. The best he could hope was that it would be discounted as yet another wild rumor in a time when they’d be flying.

The ache in his bones had centered on his left knee, and a glance down his body showed bandages encasing him virtually from head to toe. He gently probed a spot and when he felt no pain, moved to another. He was healed beneath them. A show, then. Which meant someone was on his side and attempting to keep his secret. A monitor beeped behind him, announcing a heartbeat he knew wasn’t his own.

Heartbeat. There was one in the room with him. He turned his head slowly, finding Jack sprawled in a chair beside him, her hair hanging loosely around her head, her eyes closed. They opened as if she felt the weight of his gaze, warily fixing on him. She knew. This wasn’t how he’d planned for her to find out.

“Your fangs are showing,” she said dully.

He ran the tip of his tongue over them, finding them fully extended. Still sharp as concertina barbs, but his lips and tongue had calloused to them and they no longer cut. He’d lost control of them while unconscious.  _ Shit _ . She held out an arm covered in fresh pinprick scars and thin, silvered lines.

“Go ahead. You’ve been doing it for weeks now. Might as well give you one more. This isn’t going to turn me into a fucking vampire or enslave me to you or anything, is it?”

“No,” he said, reflexively licking his lips as his vision tinged again.

“You suck even when you’re unconscious. There’s probably a joke in there somewhere, but I’m too goddamn tired to make it.” She raked her free hand through her hair, the dark locks dull and almost matted. Her skin looked pale even through the blush cast by the blood haze.

“You need rest,” he said. “How often have you been donating?”

“‘Donating,’” she scoffed. “Is that what you call it? Miranda and I have been taking turns. You didn’t answer my question.”

“No,” he said, rubbing a bandaged hand over his face, only to find more there.

“Mummy meets vampire. Next, you’re going to howl at a full moon. We’re close enough to see it, you know.”

“Where are we?” he asked.

“Huerta. And before you ask, the  _ Normandy _ made it in last week. Everybody’s fine. A little banged up, but they’ll make it. And the war’s over. Reapers are dead. You fucking scared me, Shepard.” She scowled, pushing her arm at him again. “Just fucking drink already.”

“You’re actually okay with this?” he asked.

“I’ve had plenty of fucking time to get used to the damn idea since I found you on the Citadel with fucking fangs, no pulse, not breathing, and still fucking talking to me. I search for bodies, dig out wreckage, and sit here. None of that requires a whole lot of attention. Hell, I can crush a mech with my mind. Not like I can judge, right?” she said tiredly. “How old  _ are  _ you, Shepard? Are you, like, ancient or new?”

“Um… I was born in 1984, so...two hundred and two? Three? How close to April is it?”

“After,” she said. “Holy fuck, Shepard, you’re two centuries old. That’s...humans still don’t live that long. You look like you’re fucking thirty.”

“I was,” he said. “Somewhere around there. I don’t exactly remember.” He glanced at her proffered wrist, the familiar burn rising in his throat. “Are you sure about this? You look...rundown.”

“I’m fine,” she said. “Just tired. The Cerberus cheerleader’s been checking my red blood cell counts and shit. ...Is Chakwas one of you? Is she the one who turned you?”

“No,” he said, choosing to answer the latter question. The former wasn’t his secret to tell.

He’d had to tell Miranda when he’d joined up with Cerberus. Chakwas, Hackett had arranged to be stationed on the first  _ Normandy _ with him. Every doctor and nurse assigned to teams he was in since the admiral had turned him had been one of them. She was his favorite, though, and he’d been glad when she’d agreed to stay with him. If she’d wanted Jack to know, she’d have told her.

He linked his fingers with hers, drawing her wrist to his mouth, and set his teeth into her as gently as he could manage. Hot, viscous blood burst over his tongue, drawing a deep groan from him as he sealed his lips over her skin and drank. The heat banked the fire in his throat, rejuvenating him. Her eyes remained locked on his, perhaps wondering if he would be able to stop now that he was conscious. He mentally gauged the volume he was intaking in a process that was second-nature now, and forced himself to break the seal and withdraw his teeth, swiping his tongue over the wounds to soothe them.

“Thank you,” he said.

“Yeah, well, you’re still not totally back to normal. Your left leg was nearly severed. Doc says it healed itself without being set first. And you apparently heal too quickly for surgery to do anything but cause more damage because they can’t keep it open long enough or something. You may be the only vampire ever to walk with a limp,” she informed him.

“What are you going to do?” he asked.

She shrugged, leaning back into her chair again and swiping medigel onto her wrist. “Fucked if I know. So you drink blood and you’re old. Doesn’t seem like anything’s really changed. You’ve been this way the whole time we’ve been together. It just answers some questions and brings up others.”

“Fair enough,” he said. “How are the rest of the kids?”

Her eyes darkened and she stood up, sending her chair skittering back over the tile. “Dead. I’m getting out of here. I need some fucking air.”

She fled, leaving him alone to contemplate the ceiling. He was alive. Jack was alive. Ashton was still dead. The war was over. If the Reapers hadn’t killed him, it was unlikely anything would. Which meant he needed to start contemplating the rest of his damned existence. He couldn’t spend the rest of it waiting for someone he’d never find. It was time to move on. He cared about Jack. Maybe that meant he could keep her for awhile. Hell, she’d accepted it easier than he’d imagined she could. Maybe, just maybe, he could keep her forever. Maybe Liara had been right. Maybe he didn’t have to be alone.


	9. Epilogue: ...Before the Dawn

**17 July 2189**

**Villa Militar, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil**

 

John scanned the formation of eager troops in front of him, cocking his weight back to rest on his good leg as he crossed his arms over his chest in what his crew had nicknamed his ‘commander pose.’ They were all young, even for human lifespans, fit, and in the prime of their lives. Every one of them had proven him or herself enough in the war to be invited to the Villa. Each one hoped to be awarded the coveted N7 designation. More of them likely would than in the years before the war. That they’d survived to be standing here meant they probably had what it took. 

He’d been released from the hospital a year ago, sent home to recuperate with Jack. She’d stayed with him until he could reliably get around well enough to hunt on his own, and had taken a deployment as soon as she could get away. He’d seen her once since, but the messages she occasionally sent kept him apprised of her general goings-on.

She still wasn’t entirely comfortable with his nature and dealing with the loss of the kids had been hard on her. He couldn’t entirely blame her for wanting to get away. He’d strongly considered resigning from the Alliance and remaining a Spectre, but his future in that was limited. The Alliance was big enough to disappear in. The Spectres were not. The desire to escape into anonymity was almost overwhelming, but she’d thus far refused his requests to change or enthrall her so that he could keep her with him, which meant he had to keep up the pretense for now. He couldn’t begrudge her wanting to keep her humanity.

The war was over. The galaxy was rebuilding. The mass relays and comm buoys in Council and Alliance space were mostly functional again. The cities were beginning to recover, though they still had a long way to go. Rio was a shell of its former self, but given the losses of their N7s, rebuilding the Villa had been a priority. All of the surviving N-rated soldiers had been called upon to take on training positions. So, here he was.

Moreno, the lead instructor below him, walked the line, reciting a speech he’d repeated often enough it should have been rote but somehow wasn’t. The man had been there when John had gone through ICT. It hadn’t been around long enough for him to have cycled through with more than one identity, but he was already wondering how long it would be before he’d be able to go through again without being recognized.

Moreno wore the war in the lines on his face and the silver shot through his dark hair. They all did. Hell, even Hackett was looking somewhat haggard these days. Even with Zaeed stationed on the Crucible Project, he’d missed more feedings than he should have and it showed. So, for that matter, had John, but he’d taken more shore leaves and been to more places where humans were already dying. He’d mostly recovered, but his damn knee still gave him trouble.

Chakwas had tried to go in and reset it, but the joint had shattered and the best she could do with the damn bones knitting together under her hands was clean it up. Sedation didn’t work well on him, so he’d eventually told her to stop. Being close to death might be enough to make him feel alive and he might have a high pain tolerance, but he wasn’t a masochist by any stretch of the imagination. So, he dealt with the slight limp and the aching joint.

Moreno ordered the platoons to the PT yard where they would finalize their paperwork before sending them to requisitions and medical and chow and finally giving them their room assignments. John took over there, making them dump their carefully-packed bags onto the ground for sorting before repacking and dumping them again for the hell of it. Keep them frustrated, make them feel like they’ve earned every concession, stress them to the breaking point. He had a feeling it wouldn’t be as easy as it had been before. Their definition of ‘stress’ had changed.

He gave his own spiel about teamwork and battle buddies, choosing a selection method for them at random--the person to their left this time--and watched them silently size each other up. They’d come expecting a competition and they’d get it, but not in the way they’d anticipated. Teams were the name of the game for N1. The individual would fail. The team would survive. It was a lesson he’d learned from his SEAL days on to the  _ Normandy _ .

One soldier stood out from the others. His eyes were locked on John rather than the cadet beside him. His uniform was perfectly pressed, his boots gleaming. His pale hair shimmered in the sunlight like spun silk. Slightly shorter and significantly leaner than his buddy, he still radiated a quiet strength, and the set of his jaw told John he’d found a stubborn one. That would be fun. But none of those attributes made his heart stop in his chest and his breath catch on an inhale. It was his eyes. ‘Hazel’ wasn’t descriptive enough to do them justice. They were the color of afternoon sunlight on summer wheat. The color of…

_ Ashton. _


End file.
